How you view things on the screen can vary depending on the lighting, reflections and general quality of the monitor, but it is important to make sure you have the correct settings and to take regular breaks.

• Blurry Fonts and Graphics

  Have you set the resolution to suit the screen rather than your eyes? If you are using a bulky CRT screen you can reduce the resolution to 640 by 480 in the settings panel under the desktop properties and this will make all the icons and text appear larger, but reduce the amount of items you can see on the screen. If you have a TFT or flat screen and items appear blurry, you may find the resolution has not been set to the one advised by the manufacturer. Once again, try different settings.

• Change settings for icons, menus, fonts and other features

  Microsoft guides for system setting changes. For generally making all menu and window fonts larger go to the Desktop – (right hand mouse button) Properties – Appearance tab and choose Font size Large or Extra Large.

• ClearType Font

  Microsoft offer a way of sometimes improving the clarity of the fonts on the screen. It is worth a try but does not work with all monitors and may be knocked out if you are using magnification software. There is an on-line ClearType Tuner or a version that can be downloaded. Further ClearType information. ClearType is enabled by default under Windows Vista, but you can still use the ClearType Tuner.

• Healthy monitor use

  There are many websites that provide advice about how to sit at monitor and how to place the screen for best viewing Try Healthy Computing and if you are having technical monitor problems there are many discussion sites such as AllExperts not forgetting the university computer services help desk (ISS).