Make Vista's Fonts Sing
July 19, 2007

Some of you might remember Chris Pirillo from his days back on ZDTV. Scratch that. Some of you might remember ZDTV. It was a cable TV network dedicated to computing that actually didn't suck. ZDTV begat TechTV which kind of sucked, but it had its own host of good television shows. Among them was Call for Help, originally hosted by Leo Laporte who gave way to one Chris Pirillo, owner of Locker Gnome - a technology oriented website which I used to frequent in my youth.

Sadly, TechTV did not last long before it was consumed by G4 in order to create "a network for gamers by gamers". By gamers, they mean twenty-something-males with a permanent hard-on and a penchant for beer. I believe that they are down to but one gaming related show, and even that's questionable.

You are all wondering, I'm sure, what brings me to mention this relic of a computing era gone by. Well, I was searching the great intarwebs awhile back for ways to tweak Vista's font rendering engine for a more attractive look. I was having absolutely no luck. That is, until I happened upon Chris Pirillo's page on fixing Vista's fonts. He provides a simple registry fix that remaps the most common fonts to the far superior new Segoe UI font that our benefactors have so graciously provided us.

You may be asking yourself, "does it work?". The answer is most certainly yes. The difference is utterly palpable and makes everything (especially the web) look infinitely better. You may also ask, "is this dangerous?". Well, anything involving the registry is dangerous. I can say that the keys modified appear innocuous and that I have tried this on two machines without error.

You may also notice (if you are astute) that the link you see is to my own local mirror. I've began hosting my own Windows Addons collection again. I like having all of my needs in one place, and that page is there to satisfy me. You may even find some of the FireFox extensions listed there to be... well, awesome. Enjoy!