wrote:
Over the weekend I switched from an older Optiplex G150 running Win2k
with a low-profile nVidia Riva graphics card, to a NEW Optiplex XE
running Win7 Pro and integrated Intel video chipset. The fonts are
awfully blurry both in ClearType mode and with it disabled. The
fixed-pitch characters aren't too bad but the TTFonts (variable-pitch)
are crap.

What's causing this? and what can be done remedy? The SyncMaster
931BF running at 1280x1024 has looked superb for years, and now it's
really fatiguing.


-Ed

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=333998

"Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows

Uncheck Smooth edges of screen fonts"

For contrast, to determine whether this is hardware related
in some way, you can also boot a Linux LiveCD and see whether
text is sharp there or not. If the text happens to be sharper,
then it's a software issue of some sort. If both OSes are
blurry, try a video card.

There is mention here, of an available HD 4550. Depending
on how the machine was configured, it may have more than one
video output. You might be able to test and compare VGA and
DVI-D on the monitor.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/optiplex-xe/pd

Just a guess,
Paul