Rich Menga is PCMech's video guy, an author and part-time host of PCMech LIVE.(Note before continuing: These fonts work best with ClearType enabled.)
As anyone knows, one can never have too many fonts. However, it’s better to have more good fonts than bad. Here are some links to some freebie fonts from Microsoft - and they’re all very nicely done.
First up: Consolas
This is a monospace (i.e. typewriter/terminal style) font that will make you smile if you do a lot of text editing in windows like programmers do. It is by far the best-looking and most easily readable monospaced font with ClearType enabled.
Even though this is labeled as a Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 download, the font will install easily even without that program.
Update: Yes you need the Visual Studio 2005 installed. It’s a small 2.6MB download. You need it to get the font (afterwards you can uninstall it.) Get it here.
Second up: Kootenay, Lindsey, Miramonte, Miramonte Bold, Pericles, Pericles Light, Pescadero and Pescadero Bold
These fonts are best displayed by showing you an image of what they look like.
Once again these fonts look absolutely stellar with ClearType enabled in Windows XP or Vista.
This is available as a sample only. What this means is that the fonts are regular files you can install in your Windows Fonts folder, but the download link may not last and in addition these fonts do not include many extended characters.
Hit this link and then click “Download Sample.” After launching the executable you can manually type in where you’d like the fonts to go, such as typing C:\TTF or something similar. You can then install the fonts from there.
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10/18/2007 11:17 pm
Hmmm. The Consolas installation program tells me that Visual Studio 2005 isn’t installed, and aborts.
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10/19/2007 9:24 am
This is the download link for the redistributable package of Visual Studio (free download):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32bc1bee-a3f9-4c13-9c99-220b62a191ee&displaylang=en
I will update this post to state that yes you need it installed.
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10/19/2007 7:04 pm
Thanks for the update!
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10/19/2007 11:44 pm
OK, so you want Consolas. Let’s throw in Cambria, Calibri, Constantia, Candara and Corbel in too. Unless you running Vista, if you have these, they are out of date. So, to update or get the fonts fresh, go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=048DC840-14E1-467D-8DCA-19D2A8FD7485&displaylang=en
Download the PowerPoint View 2007 as a free download and enjoy the free fonts that Microsoft gives you. It’s a bigger download at 25.8 MB by an order of 10. Less than 10 seconds or less than 1 second. Yeah, it doesn’t matter much to me.
Looks like it was my day to download some fonts!
Enjoy!
[Reply]
10/20/2007 7:24 am
Yes that is an alternative way of getting the fonts. You can also get them by downloading the Office 2007 Trial as well. The reason I didn’t recommend this way is because the downloads are huge just to get less than 2MB’s of fonts (the PowerPoint 2007 viewer alone is over 25MB in size.)
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