New to Mac: my monitor using Windows was fine; I'm having problems now

Question

I'm trying to figure out if the basic problem is that I need a monitor designed for a Mac vs PC: I have a new Westinghouse monitor, 1024x768x60, that worked fine w/PC. I've flailed around with both the Mac Display & the physical monitor display settings.
Basically the issue that I didn't experience w/PC is that the fonts are really small (eg, Mail) -- not WYSIWYG, even tho the Mac stuff is large (eg: To, Cc, menus, etc.). Also, the display (again, not the Mac stuff) is blurry (eg, what I'm typing here).
Since the whole point of the Mac Mini is that I wouldn't needlessly replicate my fairly new monitor & keyboard & mouse, I'm trying to understand how to maximize my existing hardware (I've already given up & am replacing my fairly new keyboard & mouse).
Thanks for any help. Must add, the mac has eliminated my existing PC problems.

Answer 1

George,
I've also struggled with getting my monitor (Viewsonic VX2245wm 1600x1050) to work seemlessly with my Mini. The Mini wouldn't always detect the monitor and I would get a non-native resolution that would look stretched or fuzzy when I restarted or woke-up the Mini. That was if I didn't get a blank screen with a "no signal" message.
I'm not sure if this will solve your problem, but here are the steps I followed most recently to get the Mini to recognize the monitor and provide the native resolution required (caveat - I'm not an expert, but this is what I've pieced together through reading other posts and following advice given to me in regard to questions I've posted. There are a many more knowledgable people that might chime-in so take my recommendations/explanations with a grain of salt. And as far as I can tell, you won't break anything following these steps):
1. Use Finder to search for a couple plist files with the term windowserver in the title (use windowserver as a search term). One will have alphnumeric characters. Here are examples from my Mini:
com.apple.windowserver.0016cba959d1.plist
com.apple.windowserver.plist
Apparently, these files store display related preferences and can cause erratic display behavior. Move these files to the trash and empty the trash. They'll be recreated when you restart your Mini. (search other posts for this and you'll find more details....it's a commonly recommended step for fixing display behavior)
2. Shut down the Mini and reset the PMU. Search the support pages and discussion board for the exact steps.
3. Reset the PRAM when restarting (after following the steps to reset the PMU). You'll find the exact steps in the Apple support section. Just search on PRAM.
4. Use finder to search for your windowserver plist files to confirm that new ones were in fact created according to the date/time stamp.
When I restarted my Mini after following these steps the Mini was recognizing the display as indicated by the presence of the monitor type at the top of the Displays window in System Preferences. I had to try these steps a couple times to get the Mini to recognize the display (maybe I screwed up somewhere the first time), but since then it's been working flawlessly which is nice because the monitor behavior was driving me nuts.
Again, I'm not an expert and you may get different recommendations or better explanations regarding exactly how these steps reset the display preferences, but I don't think the above mentioned steps will cause any problems outside of possibly resetting the time to some default.
One other option I'm exploring is an application called SwitchResX which apparently allows you to manually control the display settings and add resolutions not provided by the Mini. Haven't had to resort to that since going through the steps above.
Good luck and please share your results if you follow the steps above as I'm trying to develop a better understanding of what else I might try should the problem surface again.