Fireworks CS6 text rendering is a disaster

Question

This is text rendered in Fireworks CS6 next to text of the same size produced by Paint.NET, with both using their default settings.
And if we zoom in a bit:
Can you guess which was produced by a product costing $300, and which was produced by a free utility?
Seriously, is this a joke? There is no way I could use the garbage that CS6 is producing in production or to show to a client.

Answer 1

It may be worth adding here that not every typeface will render well at a single, specific small size, like 10px. Particularly at small sizes, different typefaces have different "sweet spots". So a typeface that renders horribly at 10px may actually look quite decent at 9px.
JonR001: If you don't have it already, I highly recommend The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici (published by Adobe Press!). It's extremely thorough yet readable. I purchased a second-hand 2003 edition at my local bookstore as the more recent updated version seemed to disappoint a lot reviewers.
I suspect that what you're noticing is, in part, an outcome of history. As I understand it, Adobe built its empire on print and making technology that allowed for the production of high-quality print materials. The computer display was just a weigh station in that process, not the final goal. By contrast, Apple and Microsoft have always placed a higher priority on the actual screen output. It seems that Adobe has yet to come up with a way to incorporate both worlds within their software, in terms of typographical output. They're still hanging on to their successful, print-based system.
Let's also keep in mind that, for screen output, it's better to use actual text—rather than an image of text—for at least two reasons, the first being accessibility, the second being type rendering.
I've linked to this article elsewhere, but it's got some great insights into all that goes into rendering type on screen:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typographic-anti-aliasing/
Interestingly, while doing some quick studies on this, I noticed that Photoshop's interface uses 10px type, but with subpixel anti-aliasing:
Yet Photoshop itself cannot produce this kind of output. (I suppose this is being generated by the Mac OS?)
I also found that, within Fireworks, the CS5 default Custom Anti-Alias setting—8x Oversampling, 192 Sharpness, 64 Strength—seemed to produce the best results:
Then, of course, there's the aliased type option, but that seems to be a sore subject.