If the characters of the alphabet are larger on my screen, then the maximum number of characters per line is lower which means that at a lot of Web sites I can'

If the characters of the alphabet are larger on my screen, then the maximum number of characters per line is lower which means that at a lot of Web sites I can't read a full line of text without horizontal scrolling. In that case, commonly I copy the text to the system clipboard, pull it into my favorite text editor, 'reflow' the lines, and then read them. Bummer. But a larger screen with each character taking the same amount of area on the screen as now would make the maximum number of characters per line larger letting me see whole lines more often without scrolling and/or let me have each character take up more screen area without scrolling. E.g., here at HN I'm seeing 90 characters per line which is way too many. Why HN wants such long lines I don't know. What does HN want, screens 10 feet wide? Traditional typing at 10 characters per inch horizontally on 8 1/2 x 11" paper with 1" margins gives maximum line lengths of 6 1/2" or 65 characters per line. Newspapers commonly had many fewer characters per line. 90 characters per line is just wacko in several respects -- there's no good reason for it. On my Windows XP SP3 system (yes, I recently got a DVD of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, for my next computer when I finally give up on XP), it appears that nearly all the text from Microsoft's programs, e.g., essentially everything that comes from the tree rooted at Start > Control Panel and Start > My Computer, was designed for a screen with diagonal about my 15.5" but with 640 x 480 pixels. Using the Microsoft software to set the screen resolution down to 640 x 480 makes the old Microsoft software much easier to read but, then, commonly has too few characters per screen to display all the screen contents -- e.g., the screen from Start gives a message that some content could not be displayed. So, keeping my present 1024 x 768 pixels per screen but having a screen with diagonal larger than 15.5" should basically just magnify what is shown on the screen, that is, each character would take up more screen area and be larger and easier to read. But a screen with a diagonal larger than 15.5" and, say, 1280 x 960 pixels or some, say, 2048 x 1536 would, unless I got a huge screen, say, diagonal 31", make each character on the screen take up less screen area and, thus, be still more difficult to read. Yes, more pixels per character would give nicer looking characters, but characters with just 10 x 18 pixels are easy enough to read if they take up enough screen area. That is, for reading text, I don't really need more pixels per character, as nice as that could be. E.g., in my Web site development, commonly I am specifying font sizes in terms of pixels, e.g., font-size: 25px; line-height: 30px; Then, with such a Web page, many more pixels per screen would make each character take up less screen area and, thus, be still more difficult to read. Yes, when using a Web browser I can ask for it to magnify the whole image and commonly do. But other software need not have such magnification, say, nearly all the software from Microsoft in the tree rooted at Start, so that more pixels per screen could make the text smaller and still more difficult to read. Net, I'd be happy with just my present 1024 x 768 pixels but displayed on a larger sheet of glass. Or, a larger sheet of glass with, say, 4 times as many pixels, could be more difficult to read instead of easier. Basically all I need is just a magnifying glass none of my computer hard/software knows about.