First things first - if you're running Windows XP and you've never heard of ClearType, you need to check it out. Head to Microsoft's ClearType Tuner web page to see what it's all about, and try it for yourself. For those of you that know and love ClearType, here's a little utility to help you love it just a little bit more.

Although I find that 98% of the time I want ClearType running, there are the occasional times when I'd like to turn it off - just for a second. It's sort of a hassle, since you can either go back to the Microsoft ClearType Tuner website I pointed to before, or navigate through your system's Display Settings to the Effects button on the Appearance tab to turn it on or off. If you find that you want to do this on a fairly regular basis, you might want to try QuickType, a little utility that sits in your system tray and allows you to turn ClearType on or off at will. It also gives you a shortcut to a local version of the ClearType Tuner if you have it installed (get it here), so that if you're like me and you move around from monitor to monitor, you can quickly tune your display.

The download contains no installer, so simply extract the zip file to a known folder and run it from there. The context menu when you right-click the system tray icon offers the option to run the utility when Windows starts. Note that you'll need the .Net framework installed to use QuickType, although they don't specify which version you need installed.