If you happen to read a lot onscreen, no wonder that your eyes start to hurt you even if you have a top-notch monitor. You can make things better, if you change the background color from white to pale grey, pale blue, pale green or select a gradient image for a background. You can do this either for all Windows applications or check if the particular applications you are using most often allow to change the background color or put an image (for instance, FireFox allows to change the background color).