I’ve been blogging lightly recently because I’ve been in the middle of changing computers, and moving house, and all that has taken time away from valuable blog-time. Oh, and I agreed to my _fifth_ (and last) invitation to do a paper at a conference this semester, which involves yet more writing. So I haven’t even had a chance to write a decent response to the playa-hatin’ in the thread below. Instead I’m going to kinda gripe about new computers.

Windows comes preloaded with all sorts of things you don’t want. The Cornell tech people do a pretty good job of removing most of these, though there’s still a bunch of features in Word that I have to remember to turn off before I start cursing at the computer. (I don’t blame the tech guys for not removing these – I bet some people actually like Word to futz with documents as soon as it senses a chance.) But the one genuinely great innovation Windows has made in the last few years is, quite surprisingly, not installed with the standard installation. The great innovation is “ClearType”:http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx.

Maybe there are some downsides to ClearType that I haven’t noticed yet. I guess it uses up some memory, but very little I think compared to the other junk Microsoft insists on inflicting. And I suspect it decreases quality of graphical (as opposed to textual) displays on some (but not all) monitors. But for reading text on flat-screen monitors (as I now do at the office) or even on conventional monitors (as I do at home) it’s an enormous improvement. I was getting a little upset with the poor quality of my new fancy display until I realised I didn’t have ClearType installed. With it the screen looks wonderful. If you are running Windows XP I highly recommend installing it.