How to tidy up jagged fonts in Windows XP

This is something that has been bugging me for ages: some people have really nice crisp looking fonts on their screens, and some people have nasty jagged ones - certainly if they are looking at serif fonts.

It transpires that Windows XP has a font-smoothing function called Clear-Type, which improves ten-fold the quality of the viewing experience for serif fonts.  I always thought that I was doing something wrong: turns out it was Windows all along, because Clear-Type is not necessarity turned on by default (although why you wouldn't want it on I don't know... you'd be having serious issues if you were worried about saving resources by turning it off!)

Turning on Clear-Type is easy. 

1. Bring up Display properites.  Control Panel> Display
2. Choose Appearance> Effects
3. Turn on "use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts"
4. Select Clear-Type

Now... relax your eyes and enjoy.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306527

Note: as far as I know, Clear-Type is enabled by default in Vista.