An excellent research paper by Steve Gibson explains better than I can some very good reasons to despise Cleartype, and Microsoft font rendering techniques. This, I believe, is reason enough to make every computer you own a Macintosh, or at least attempt to install MacOS on your computers. Unless you enjoy reading at the MS mandated font size using the MS mandated fonts under cleartype (which is good, but I don’t prefer the MS recommended settings).
Well, I am cheap, and even though Apple hardware is typically cheaper than comparable non-Apple hardware, I am not in the market for that kind of hardware. As such, I have used Windows, and the Safari browser for reading on Windows (Safari uses the MacOS font technology). That is, until about a month ago, when I read this post about gdi++. I use gdi++ under Windows now, and am not forced to use Safari at all anymore. Now I am back to using Opera on my $300 Acer laptop, and the text is much more readable. The japanese developers of this software have my gratitude. 