Increased menu bar size for the vision impared

Question

My mother needs a new computer, and I was thinking of getting her the 24" iMac. Her vision is failing, and I was wanting to increase the size of icons and menus to help her see them better.
I can't seem to find a way to increase the size of the menu bar or any of the application controls (she is a big MSOffice user).
I know I can decrease the screen resolution, but this looks terrible on an LCD screen. Also, the magnification feature is nice, but considering that a 24" screen is available, just enlarging everything leaves enough room to work.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, few will answer, and the answer would be a resounding "no".
I just went to a "Genius Bar" appointment and asked, because I basically had the same problem: I went to buy a 13" MacBook for my aunt and uncle - in their mid-70s - and I specifically asked about that issue, only to be told that I could indeed change the menu fonts and their sizes.
Turns out I can't and I now have two rather unhappy relatives who spent twice on their Mac laptop than they'd have on a PC crap one, but where the menus would have been fine for them to read after I'd made a few interface changes.
To add insult to injury, the "Genius" (and Lord, how those quotes are necessary!) came up with the solution to install Windows on the MacBook and run that instead. He's really lucky I did not have the 13" at hand otherwise I'd have force-fed the thing to him. I did NOT spend all that money, plus two days trying to find a solution, only to get that sort of crapola offered as an answer.
Anyhow.
From what I've surmised, Apple has not thought it useful enough to allow mere mortals to decide what's best for us and trust us with choosing fonts and sizes we like - or need.
I've been looking about, and so far only two (partial) solutions have come up:
1) Changing the scaling factor, a not-totally documented possibility that can be accessed after downloading OSX developers tools... See here: http://guides.macrumors.com/Changingthe_effective_screenresolution
I haven't tested this yet on my own PB, as my battery ran out while downloading but I will try it again later.
2) Doing the same thing, but through a shareware application called TinkerTool System (http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerToolSys.html) which allows you to change the pixel density factor. I downloaded the app (there's a free, fully-funtioning, 5-run download available) and it works as promised... as long as the applications you use are made to work with this "developer-only" feature of 10.5 - for instance, Firefox clearly isn't.
But still, I was impressed in that the menu bar items looked quite all right (the clock and other menu bar icons did not scale, and looked odd) and that, for the apps that did scale well (iTunes, Opera, Safari, Finder) the results were visually pleasing, and very legible.
I would suggest you download it and try it for free on your Mum's computer - a scale factor of 1.25 looked all right to me, but you can go higher I guess. Just make sure that while your factor is set, you open each and every application she's liable to use and see if they do scale well. If they do, TTS is about $10 and that would be money well spent. I am going to try it on my folks' MB and I hope that'll do the trick...
...until Apple decides that there is a good reason after all behind "Windoze"'s user-tweaked UI possibilities after all
Let me know if it worked for you and best,
Ludovic