Display text blurry or fuzzy in Windows 7

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Windows 7 display is not sharp, especially when reading text

One particular day when I upgraded to a new laptop installed with windows 7 and a new external monitor, I was surprised to find that the screen seemed blurry or basically not sharp,  unlike my trusted windows xp in the past (almost like a soft filter from photoshop was permanently applied). It was giving me an eye-strain at the end of every work day, pretty painful to me compared to my previous laptop.

I picked out 3 possibilities as the cause. Either the screen was at fault, the OS was at fault, or the graphics card was the cause.

Things I tried... Used a hdmi cable instead of vga. Nope.
Tried calibrating my external monitors and even trying another. Nope.
This left the OS and graphics card in question.

Switching the graphics card was a troublesome affair compared to the former, so I digged into the OS settings. In windows 7 Control panel-> Display properties, what I found was a little new feature that was previously unknown to me.

This new animal called "ClearType" claimed to make text sharper and clearer.
Using the tuner however did not really satisfy me.
In the end, I resorted to switching this "new" feature off totally.

Now my text is "sharp" like in windows xp, just the way I like it.
Maybe it is not as smooth, but I rather it stay comfortable for my eyes rather than keeping it pretty.

The harmless looking ClearType feature