Windows – Run monitor on 1440×900 resolution when native is 1920×1200

Solved in the most unlikely way : used a different VGA cable. Apparently somebody used my monitor (without my knowledge) and used their own (defective) cable and left it there. I found back my original cable and plugged it in, in place of the defective one, and everything went back to normal in literally a second.

I got a hunch that the trouble might be the cable when I was poking around the (labyrinthine) Windows registry and found that the Intel GMA detected my monitor as "#-" instead of "Del003" as it usually did and the Serial Number of the monitor could not be read. (Also thanks to Ivo too for mentioning "cable" which triggered something in my mind.)

This condition was probably caused by the graphic card not getting the right EDID (Extended display identification data) from the LCD Monitor. Since the monitor is fine, I looked at the cable more carefully and noticed it wasn't the original one.

This incident has wasted hours of my life, but oh boy what a lesson. A lesson hopefully no one else has to endure.

:-)

There is not a way to keep the monitor at its native resolution but resize all the fonts (on a raster-based graphical user interface) without introducing some amount of pixelation. You're fighting natural laws.

The best you can do is try to optimize for 'least blurring'.

In GNOME, for instance, you can change both the DPI and "Font Size" independently, so maybe if you tweak those enough you can find a decent compromise.

You might also try alternate display technologies, such as viewing the desktop over RDP or VNC, which have their own algorithms for resizing.

Ultimately your best result would be to attach a monitor with different native resolution (or an analog CRT monitor) - either that, or spend $20 on some reading glasses!