monitor, crappy text

My parents recently bought themselvesa viewsonic va720 lcd and the text is horrible, it has shadows behind it and unless you are watching a movie or playing a game it isnt really practical to use. They are still running win98. Im at a loss of ideas since this is my first dealings with an lcd. The machine is a 1.13 athlon, with 256 meg pc133, wd 15 gig hd, pny gf2mx400, and a soundblaster live value card. Any help would be great, as if I cant figure it out they are going to take it back and get something else.

Try putting the refresh rate back to adapter default.

Go to control panel > Display Properties > then the settings tab > then advanced at the bottom right

Then go through the tabs until you find one about refresh rate and stick it to adapter default. If that doesn't work try some others.

My mate had this problem with his really old computer. The text was all blurry and weird looking. I think his monitor just wasn't very good.

If that don't work, then I am at a loss as to whats wrong.

Enable cleartype

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/cleartypeactivate.htm

use a higher resolution. You can change the text size with DPI in Display Properties.

Try this tool: http://www.monitorsdirect.com/toolkit/index.shtml

First, run PixelSharp, then launch MonitorsDirect ToolKit