Ow, My Eyes!

I had nearly run my work laptop into the ground, so I recently swapped it out for an identical model.  After the expected hassle of reinstalling scads of programs, I realized things still didn't look quite right.  Specifically, reading was painful, even with the same fonts at the same resolution.

After some digging, I found the solution: turn on ClearType font smoothing.  Mouse over the text below to see the difference:

Update: Fixed the mouse-over behavior.  If it doesn't seem to work, you can view the difference here:
Without ClearType | With ClearType

The difference is most apparent on flat panel LCDs.  If you have Windows 7 (or a Mac made after 1976), this feature is on by default, but my company laptop still runs Windows XP.

Follow these instructions if you'd like to save your eyes, and you can read up on how subpixel rendering works if that sounds like fun to you.

And yes, that's Hurley's version of the Empire Strikes Back script.  Aww, who else misses Hurley?