More win 7, Parallels and external monitor question on a Retina MBP

K

Kitmonster

Bit poster
So I have read all the posts but don't see a clear answer I can track.

I just bought a MBP retina. Used migration to move everything off my MBA and after some fiddling with passwords got it all working.

When I plug in my standard HP monitor (1920 x 1080 60 hz) the Mavericks OS display with pin point clarity.

However when I open up Parallels into windows 7 it does its resolution doubling thing and I get a reported windows resolution of 3840 x 2004 with the Parallels Vu display. Going into Advanced settings shows the monitor is being correctly identified.

The challenge is that the text is not super clear ie somewhat blurred and looks a little washed out with less than perfect definition between colours. Its perfectly readable but not all day which is what I have to do at work. The Parallels desktop upper and lower title bars are all very clear so I surmise its all to do with the way Parallels 9 is scaling or resolving the windows desktop. Shrinking the window down to about half the screen so I can see the underlying OX desktop shows the external monitor is displaying very clearly. I tried both the standard VGA to thunderbolt lead and a Thunderbolt to HDMI, exactly the same problem. I am also concerned that when I hook up the MBR to a projector I am going to see the same poor resolution.

There must be a lot of us with the same problem so any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Its annoying as the MBA and Parallels 9 performed perfectly with any external monitor I used so it must be a retina/Parallels problem
 
Windows 7 assumes single DPI value across all displays and can't change DPI settings on the fly. So, if you started the VM with retina resolution enabled and moved it to external display, Parallels Desktop down scales the image which makes it blurred a bit. If PD didn't scale it, text and controls will be really huge.
If you normally place your VM on external screen, you might want to set VM Configuration > Hardware > Video > Resolution to Scaled.
 
Serv,

Thanks for the response. All sounds sensible!

I have one more question but before I ask it wanted to say generally how well the PD is working on the new Macbook pro. I used to run it only as a necessity to get access to the latest the MS Office programs and could never get it to work on a duel screen. I don't know if it s the extra memory I now have or the better graphics chip but I am now running PD full screen and have both monitors running windows and can swipe the main screen into OSX while the secondary screen stays in windows. It made a huge difference to my productivity and both OS's are lightning fast

So the question.....in your experience and understanding would you expect to see better resolution and general graphical results using windows 8 in PD rather than 7? I can upgrade cheaply enough but don't want to introduce some other unknown. I know its not your program and therefore you cannot say definitively and cant guarantee anything but whats your experience and recommendation?
 
Windows 8.1 is better with respect to per display DPI support, it's a new feature actually. But keep in mind that Windows merely provides APIs, the rest depends on specific applications that you're using. Older apps might not display their UI properly with DPI settings higher than 100%. Even Office 2013 isn't always perfect with retina-high DPI. Per display DPI mode is not yet fully supported by Windows own Explorer.
Generally Windows 8.1/Office 2013 is better with retina+external displays. But don't expect absolutely flawless experience just yet.
 
Thanks very much for the advice. I have a few older apps that I use just because I don't want to spend $200 on updates I will not use, like Mindjet Mindmanager on Windows. I will do some thinking and if I upgrade post my experiences in case its useful to others.

Meanwhile thanks again for the straightforward and timely feedback

Cheers
 
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