Why does the Prime use anti aliasing on text?

[TravisE]

The effect of the subpixel rendering mockup isn't really going to come across on a forum like this unless you literally view the image directly on the HP Prime's screen. The monitor you're using to view it now won't necessarily match the Prime's display performance, contrast, DPI, resolution, or geometric subpixel layout, so trying to judge by screenshots here is likely to lead one to an inaccurate conclusion.

Jim Horn makes an interesting point. On my desktop Linux machine, I selected a particular Freetype hinting mode due to the fonts appearing bolder and easier to read rather than the one that was supposed to be most faithful to the font's shape. In the case of the Prime, I suspect I wouldn't have any complaint reading non-antialiased text, though I'd have to actually try it in order to say for sure. Bitmap fonts were never any trouble for me with “classic” monochrome calculators, but those had quite low DPI displays by today's standards. But the Prime's LCD does seem to be just low enough of a DPI that I agree that the antialiasing doesn't look particularly brilliant, either.

Getting rid of antialiasing would probably also require some careful hinting to avoid distorting font characters at such a low resolution, though. Back in the Windows 9x days, I believe I remember reading that Microsoft chose to design their default fonts and font rendering engine to optimize for more legible on-screen reading, at a possible expense of shape accuracy. Such an optimization would be important here. (As an interesting side note, I seem to remember that when they first introduced antialiased text, the system tended to apply it only to bold text and larger font sizes in the earlier versions of Windows for some reason, leaving smaller text without the smoothing. Perhaps at the time this was considered more legible.)