XPS M1710 compressed or distorted graphics?

I have a new m1710 (w/ nvidia 7900GTX) and have started noticing that graphics in Internet Explorer and in some menus (like the taskbar) seem like they're scaled wrong, or somehow compressed or distorted in some way. It's not immediately apparent, but after having the laptop for a couple of days it's unmistakable. I've tried changing resolutions but I can still see the distortion (although blurrier at lower resolutions, obviously). It basically looks how it would if you went in to Photoshop, turned antialiasing/smoothing off, and resized an image so that some pixels become 'fat' and some don't. On a diagonal line, it creates a jagged effect like this:
....../
..__/
./
/

This seems to be some kind of active graphic compression or something going on. For example, if a site has an animation (flash? maybe GIF) there's no distortion while it animates, but when it's done, it 'pops' into ugly compressed/distorted mode. This phenomenon is most visible with moving text anims.

The actual text looks fine, and the desktop icons and start menu icons look fine, too. I even saved a graphic from a webpage and opened it in Corel and it's fine when viewed that way -- but ugly and compressed/scaled when seen in IE.

Help..?! This must be some kind of setting somewhere, but I can't find it in the graphics setup.

Naturally, when posting this to the Dell forum, someone immediately responded with their horror story of being on with India service techs for hours and never solving the problem. I hope I'm not going to have to deal with that, or wind up selling this... Although the SLI Sager looks good right about now.

 

This is a common problem. Just change the DPI number to what suits you. I don't really know to which since I don't own one with such resolution. Normally DPI is set to 96, maybe 120 works for you. Just right click on the Desktop > settings > advanced and you change the number to what suits you.

 

*whew* OK, thanks! I'm going to go check it out.

 

Dont worry, that will fix your problems

Another thing you cant try, to make things clearer is:

Right click your desktop, properties, Appearance tab, click effects, and then on the second option, there is a drop down menu. It will say "standard", but change it to "Cleartype" and make sure the box is checked. Then apply, then "okay"

 

It came with Cleartype enabled, but thanks again!

 

Just chiming in here, but are you running the display at a resolution other than its native resolution? For example, if your display is a native 1920x1200, are you running it at a lower resolution like 1280x800 or something? Fixed-pixel displays are prone to scaling problems which can result in visual artifacts...

 

BTW, this did work. Of course, the bars and such are now pretty tiny, I guess I could double the DPI and make it not look 'stepladder' ish... But this is fine. Since I'm 37, I figure this will be about the last few years before I have to start scaling stuff like this up so I can read it, anyway. :/

Heh

Thanks again!

 

Good to know!!

 

my notebook did the same thing to me. i thought my eyes were going heh