Blurry fonts fix (RGB LED panel) + audio fix

The first thing i noticed after receiving my new XPS16 with an RGB LED panel, was the blurry reddish fonts. The problem was worst when tilting the screen back (opening the laptop up fully). Viewing from this slightly low angle, the text below the icons, placed on the top of the Vista screen was looking really bad. Smeared in red and pink color. Here's a screen shot:

Segoe UI font + TrueType ON (Vista):



It looked to me like a convergence problem, where the Red, Green and Blue colors didn't line up to form one single pixel. It looked like the red was out of whack. It was difficult for me to focus and a strain to my eyes. I called Dell and they sent a repair man right away and he swapped the complete screen (not just the panel) with a new one. I didn't expect the swap to help. I was pessimistic and thought Dell just used low quality panels. But the swap did in fact help on the "convergence" problem. Not a huge amount but enough to be noticed. Still, i wasn't completely satisfied. I had sharper fonts when using my old Inspiron 8200 or an external Dell monitor on the XPS16.

I started messing around in Vista and noticed that by default, it was configured using the Segoe UI font and of course using TrueType. Changing that to a font called Dotum, keeping the TrueType feature ON, i got this result:

Dotum font + TrueType ON (Vista):



Nice! I think that somehow the Dotum font is ignorant of the ClearType settings and displays itself without this feature, which is clearly a nice tradeoff in my book.

Still, the RGB LED panel of the XPS16 is showing excessive amounts of red color, which can also be seen when writing a textfile in Wordpad, black text on white background. There is an overall sense of red presence or smear which shouldn't be there. I hope that the improved adjustments available in Windows 7 with regards to both ClearType and color/hue adjustments will fix this or better it.

I will now keep my XPS16 and not return it. It is the best laptop i have ever owned all things considered. It is beautiful, light, rigid with lots of metal in its chassis, it's fast, has a vivid and brilliant looking screen, it's quiet, the eSATA works great, the track pad is working superbly, the keyboard is great after adjusting to it.

One last thing:
The audio balance issue, where the right speaker seems to dominate the sound stage. This is due to the non-center placement of the subwoofer (midwoofer to be more correct). Windows 7 has a room correction feature (awesome!) and by running the XPS16 through this room correction, you will end up with a more balanced sound stage. Try it and if you don't have a separate mic, just use the internal mic and ignore the warnings you get while going through the setup.

 

for some reason I don't have the same problem as you for the convergence. Well the only place I have that problem is in Dreamweaver where all of the "m" seem to be cut off, looking at it closely I can see that it's red where it gets cut off.

I just can't find a different font that's nice for coding though... Dreamweaver uses Courier New and I've tried several other fonts but so far none are proper for coding...

 

Hello,

I'm having the same issue with my Precision M4400 with WUXGA Truelife RGB LED screen.

I have tried to change the Vista font icons to "Dotum" and the text is absolutely clearly. I'm also adjusting the "Cleartype" properties to solve the problems with text editors...

For example: http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1886/img0906a.jpg ...

Is this a problem of the screen or only a config problem?

By the way, how brilliant is your panel? I'm working with the brightness at 50-60%!!

 

Yes, it sure does look terrible....

It's mostly a problem with the screen. It can be "worked around" by adjusting the red color in Win7 and Firefox (if possible) and also adjusting the saturation in Catalyst Control Center for the ATI gfx card.

I usually work with the screen at 40-60% brightness. It is very powerful.

 

I'm in the same situation in Dreamweaver. Most of fonts in DW, with Cleartype on, show other colors (red, green...) such as the pic which I've uploaded... For example: the "l" Arial letter is absolutely red!

But, if I switch off Cleartype I'm not comfortable either...

 

Yes... I believe that Dreamweaver + Cleartype + Truelife RGBLED is not a good combination

But.. it's a problem with the Truelife RGBLED screens in general or a problem with my screen? Do you think that I should ask for a replace? Perhaps I should call to Dell for if they can help me to configure it..

Certainly... Now I'm working with the screen at 40% brightness. The screen is excessively brilliant!!!

 

Difficult to say. Some are pleased with the screen , some are not. I think the XPS 1640 screens are more or less the same, but some users just don't notice the problem. We do. I've seen this smearing problem on other types of panels too, mostly newer generation ones, all brands. I never saw this problem on old panels (typically Sharp). The world is going to hell

Btw., I use Windows 7 and it has a ClearType Text Tuner. Be sure to run that once in a while.