Need immediate help, PLEASE!

The reason why this is so urgent is that I have a short time now to decide on whether or not I am returning my Christmas gift, the 9200 Inspiron laptop with UXGA screen. I am older using reading glasses, and most websites are very difficult for me to read with this system. I mostly am a casual internet surfer using email and Microsoft Word. My DH gave me this laptop as a gift, but I guess we had no understanding that bigger was not going to be better in our case. We just thought a bigger screen would afford us some great website viewing pleasure. I don't play games and I'm not a graphic artist or website designer. Problem is, I spent some big bucks having all my info from my old computer transferred over to this new laptop. I would like to try and make this work. So far I have tried to adjust the resolution with the slider, but all I am left with is a large black border around the whole screen. Some websites just look down right awful like Fox News and MSN. They only come up on one-half side of the screen, the rest is wallpaper, and the print, well, barely visible. I changed DPI font size to 121 and clicked on "largest" font size. I'm using ClearType, but still can't see what the ClearType option has done. I switched to Firefox and Avant browsers thinking that would help. It doesn't. The brilliant, sparkly screen was a little much especially viewing anything with a white or light background, so I dimmed that down using Fn down arrow key. Someone, please tell me I can adjust this resolution without this huge black border so that I can see and read websites. If there is anything else that I can customize, please let me know. Give me step by step though, okay. Calling DELL support was a waste. I think I got India, and after them trying to tell me to click here and there and not seeing results, the next big remedy was for me to uninstall and reinstall the drivers. No thank you. They just didn't know what to tell me. So I would greatly appreciate any help anyone on this forum could give me. Thanks.

Linda

 

Linda, I have the XGA+ and love it but sometimes do some adjusting as my eyes are older with contacts/reading glasses or glasses. I did not order the UXGA because I feared that I would not be able to comfortably use it.

If you have not tried to change this setting, you could try it:
In Internet Explorer:
Tools/Internet Options/General/Accessibility/Formatting
check: IGNORE FONT SIZES SPECIFIED ON WEB PAGES

You can then adjust View/Text Size accordingly. It may mess up some pages, but overall, it may help. If not, I recommend the XGA+ as a possible exchange with Dell.

Hope this helps.

 

I've had this same experience, when I bought an Inspiron 8200 I opted for the UXGA and regretted it after the fact. The resolution is just too high for my liking, whereas SXGA is perfect (for my eyes). I'm not totally sure what Dell's policy is on exchanges or if they charge you a restocking fee. The UXGA is actually a more expensive option that regular XGA, so maybe you'd save back the money you'll lose with restocking anyway.

As far as the fact you had data transferred, maybe you could slyly purchase another hard drive from Dell (same type you got with the machine) remove the hard drive you had data transferred to and hold onto it until the new 9200 comes.

The problem with laptop LCD screens is that they work best only in their native resolution, so anything other than what the laptop is made for viewing with is going to be, frankly, crap.

 

Yorkie,
That adjustment seems to help with the font size on the webpages. Is there a way to get the webpages to come up and fill the whole screen in this native resolution? If not, I just can't stand some of these websites coming up in just one corner of this screen. Thanks.

Linda

 

Unfortunately, that is the way that those particular pages were designed by the webmaster....some small to the left, some small centered.

If you are within your 21 days, maybe you could complain to Dell about the sparkling and have them switch it for the XGA+.