At work, I’ve been upgraded to a new 64-bit Windows 7 computer and was stunned to find out that Helvetica was not installed. Seriously? Helvetica is one of the very few default computer fonts that “everybody” seems to have. I couldn’t be more disappointed. I know it’s generally heralded that Helvetica is primarily a Mac font. Even so… I’ve always had it.

Sure, the new bundled ClearType fonts are crisp… but only Windows users are going to have these. They’re not free fonts. Unless a font comes pre-installed on all future operating systems, it’s not going to have widespread adoption.

Microsoft’s ClearType technology completely fails with most fonts larger than 14 point size. Most large fonts are aliased and have jagged edges. A great example: YouTube. Video titles look absolutely horrid in my opinion. I was hoping Windows 7 would fix this problem. Nope.

Helvetica is one of my favourite web fonts—especially at large sizes. I’m not entirely sure why some fonts, like Helvetica, completely ignore the ClearType rules and get rendered with old-fashioned, non-sub-pixel rendering. At least it looks good big though!

I’m also sad that Safari has defaulted to Windows ClearType, rather than using Mac’s own sub-pixel rendering system. Luckily, you can still turn it back on.

Back to my core issue: no Helvetica? I tried to download it but it isn’t available for free. You’d hope that the default weight of Helvetica would be free by now, but nope.

I couldn’t be more depressed. Well, of course I could… but it’s disappointing nonetheless.