ZoomText Express by Ai Squared

The idea behind this program is good.

The Ai Squared web site says" ZoomText Express is an affordable screen magnifier designed for those who squint at the computer screen and lean in to read the fine print. It provides a gentle boost of magnification (up to 2 times) so that hard to read text is larger, clearer and easier to see. You can also apply a soft tint to white areas of the screen or reverse all colors to eliminate that familiar blinding glare.

Have trouble finding the mouse pointer and text cursor? ZoomText Express lets you adjust the size and color of the pointer and apply eye-catching locators to the cursor making them easy to see and follow."

Sounds terrific. So I gave it a try on a production Vista system.

First the good part. When you load the CD to install you will be pleasantly surprised at the big clear installation window.

I chose the Custom installation for this review. One of the options is to Disable Windows font smoothing in order to "display the highest quality magnified text." That was scary but I went along with it for the test.

A few more installation issues (license agreement, etc) and then a screen telling you that you must reboot after setup - Boo! In these multitasking days, this is unwelcome and unexpected.

I went about my business for about 20 minutes and then noticed the ZoomText yellow icon with a Z on it on the desktop. Thinking now was a good time to test the software I double-clicked and… my system rebooted! No warning. No opportunity to save my open work! I find this to be unacceptable.

Sure, I take responsibility for clicking on the icon but many of the people in the intended audience (seniors, etc) may have the same thing happen to them and it's just not acceptable IMO.

After it rebooted, the typeface of everything on my system (Word docs, etc) looked like an old dot matrix printer. I guess that was the result of turning off Windows font smoothing. Yuck.

I chose the trial run which gives you 10 minutes to use the program. A big box appears with 4 tabs - View, Color, Pointer and Cursor.

View lets you change the magnification. Color lets you change the tint. Pointer lets you change the size and color of the mouse pointer and Cursor changes the cursor settings (where you begin typing). It just seemed too kludgy for me to use.

I tried all the options within my 10 minutes and couldn't wait to uninstall. Of course it needed another reboot after the uninstall. This time I closed everything else down first. (Fool me once…)

When my Vista Aero system came back up, it still had the crappy fonts. The uninstall did not restore the previous settings so I had to manually go in to my system settings and re-enable Clear Type. I wonder how many in the intended audience will be able to do that?

The idea behind this program is terrific and we are going to test it at Computers Assisting People with some visually impaired people. But the dangerous reboots and changes (without restore) to system settings make this software unacceptable. It's Version 1.0 so maybe that should be expected but it's no excuse. Try it yourself.

If you need help seeing the screen, check out the built-in options in Windows. The Ease of Access center in Vista, for example, includes a Magnifier and an option for high-contrast color scheme.

And don't forget my favorite trick for changing the size of web sites. Just hold down the Control key and press + to enlarge or - to shrink the page.