Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

The right image is probably also closer to an ideal layout than the right image as well, but that's not exactly something consumers care about, only designers. Given the advantages of ideal layout vs pixel-snapped and grid aligned, the technical hurdles of sub-pixel rendering (layers render onto also needing to be pixel-snapped, alpha blending issues, device orientation, etc), and high-density displays becoming cheaper and the norm, I don't anticipate sub-pixel cleartype will be making a comeback. As a result, I've been thinking pretty hard about just picking up a 4k monitor to run things at 200% scaling. Seems like the best way to go at this point.

Still a waste of resources and energy to replace a perfectly working 1920x1200 24" display by a 4k 16:9 display which in combination with my 17" laptop with 1920x1080 display will cause scaling problems. I read that modern 4k uses no more than old 2k - but my logic says that modern 2k should use even less than modern 4k 

I use Win 10 preview so I know that I can set the scaling per monitor but again not all programs work with per mon scaling which results in bitmap scaled program windows when moving a windows between two monitors with different scaling levels. Pretty cool for Windows Explorer - maybe Office 2016 but MMC based windows like event viewer and service manager are just ugly.

So I would need the laptop display and external display with the same ppi to be able to use 200% on both. Replacing the laptop display is currently impossible - and again, I do not need more pixels. All I would need is an option to stop all kind of font smoothing and set a system font like Arial or Tahoma which displays nicely without font smoothing in contrast to Segoe UI and most modern web fonts.

But economy wants to sell new stuff and not let us use working stuff or save resources ;-)

No, it is not 100%, 125 or 150% upscaling.

Look at this page ( http://prohardver.hu/forum/index.html ).

It uses small size fonts, and in Edge (Spartan) it is nearly unreadable. Firefox is in the left, Edge is in the right.

I miss sub-pixel cleartype as much as the next person, but I think "nearly unreadable" is a bit of a stretch. I will say that the left image looks nicer, but I don't find the right image particularly hard to read (besides being in Hungarian). For reference, I was viewing the image on a 94 PPI display from about 2.5 feet away. 

The right image is probably also closer to an ideal layout than the right image as well, but that's not exactly something consumers care about, only designers. Given the advantages of ideal layout vs pixel-snapped and grid aligned, the technical hurdles of sub-pixel rendering (layers render onto also needing to be pixel-snapped, alpha blending issues, device orientation, etc), and high-density displays becoming cheaper and the norm, I don't anticipate sub-pixel cleartype will be making a comeback. As a result, I've been thinking pretty hard about just picking up a 4k monitor to run things at 200% scaling. Seems like the best way to go at this point.

No, it is not 100%, 125 or 150% upscaling.

It is the difference between the old cleartype, and the new font redenring.

Look at this page ( http://prohardver.hu/forum/index.html ).

It uses small size fonts, and in Edge (Spartan) it is nearly unreadable. Firefox is in the left, Edge is in the right.

Okay, I know, that Microsoft gets older and older, they're using glasses and larger fonts in every windows version (this forum has nearly twice the size of the font, compared to prohardver), and in 12, 14 font size, the new rendering is nearly acceptable, but, please, I want to use my PC with smaller font sizes...

Hello,

I solved it by changing the size of items. I'ts under monitor in your configuration panel. I had to change it to the smallest. Hope this will work for you guys too.

Moving to Chrome is not enough. Because Microsoft uses this ugly font rendering everywhere. Modern apps, Office, etc. Even the Windows desktop. On Windows 10, the desktop rightclick popup menus look the same.

High dpi displays are also has problems, because regular windows desktop applications cannot be upscaled properly.

Yes, I also will stay with win7, there are some issues win newer windows versions, which I cannot tolerate.

Desktop can be fixed: Control Panel > System Security > System > Advanced settings > Performance (Visual effects...) : click "Settings..." Uncheck "Smooth edges of screen fonts". Might need to sign out/sign in (sometimes double sign out/sign in - really) to get Windows Explorer and context menu without font smooth.

I use font substitution to replace Segoe UI with Tahoma, to avoid Segoe which looks ugly without smoothing.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]

"Segoe UI"="Tahoma"

Might need to set all variations of "Segoe UI..." to get what you want/need.

In my eyes HiDPI is just a waste of energy - but hey that is how progress works, isn't it ;-)