Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

354 switching to the mac: the missing manual

Fortunately, you can control the degree to which text gets smoothed. Use the pop-

up menu to choose a setting that suits your eyes—and your monitor. For example,

Apple offers Standard for CRT screens (cathode-ray tube—that is, traditional, bulky,

television-style screens), and Medium for flat-panel screens like laptops and almost

all current desktop Macs. Or just leave the setting at Automatic, to have Mac OS X

use its best choice.

Either way, the differences are fairly subtle (see Figure 13-3). Furthermore, unlike most

System Preferences, this one has no effect until the next time you open the program

in question. In the Finder, for example, you won’t notice the difference until you log

out and log back in again.

Turning Off Smoothing on Tiny Fonts

At smaller type sizes (10-point and smaller), you might find that text is less readable

with font smoothing turned on. It all depends upon the font, the size, and your taste.

For that reason, this pop-up menu lets you choose a cutoff point for font smoothing.

If you choose 12 here, for example, then 12-point (and smaller) type still appears crisp

and sharp; only larger type, such as headlines, displays the graceful edge smoothing.

You can choose a size cutoff as low as 4 points.

Note: None of these settings affects your printouts, only the onscreen display.

Bluetooth

This pane shows up only if