Frankenfurter asked:
I currently have an older Dell Inspiron laptop computer that shows text and graphics on the screen that are too large for my preference. I mean that the icons and taskbar are way too large.
My friend has a pretty new Sony Vaio and the screen looks pretty good and everything is sized the way that I'd like. I could change the graphics settings on his computer and adjust the screen resolution to make everything bigger or smaller. For some reason, I can't do this on my Inspiron. How can I adjust this on my Dell laptop? My Inspiron has XP and my friend's Vaio has Vista. Does that make a difference?
If your laptop is really old then the screen may only display at one resolution and there will be no way for you to make the text and graphics smaller. Right click on a blank area in your main widow area on the screen and select ‘properties’. Go to the ‘settings’ tab and see if you can change your screen’s resolution. Be forewarned, however, that most laptop and LCD screens display best at their native resolution. That means the resolution that the screen and pixel dimentions were engineered and manufactured.
The resolution of a computer screen is pretty much determined by the hardware. If you have an older laptop computer, chances are that the screen resolution is not as fine as it is on your friends Vaio computer. This hasnothing to do with the fact that your friend has this Sony Vaio, but only that he has a newer computer with a higher resolution screen. You can change the resolution settings on your display panel by right clicking anywhere on the desktop area and choosing properties. This should give you the option of changing the resolution, but in all likelihood the default setting is probably the best resolution that you’re going to get. If you really need a higher resolution on your laptop’s display panel the only option would be to buy a new laptop computer.
Check the control panel for the display or graphics settings. You normally change these settings using the desktop properties like you tried. I’m don’t run Vista, if that is what is installed on your new computer, but it’s possible the properties tab window are different between Vista and XP/98/95. Just ensure that you look over the properties box completely and see if you can find the display resolution settings under any of the other tabs.