We use flat screens in many of our conference rooms with our laptops from presentations. The problem is that most people just plug in thier VGA output at the low res the monitor is at (or lower) and what you get are a good size font for seeing from a distance but it's fuzzy because it's low res. The other problem is that perhaps getting people to change windows font settings and screen resolutions each time they plug in is just not going to happen for the average user. So how can we make the process down right simple?

Hire a new set of employees.

Sadly it's just a fact that the even the above average person in an office environment needs a simple easy process. Most will just plug in and go with what ever shows up. Several complain (not out loud) about the fuzzy hard to read $$$1080P 60" plasma that's running on a 800X600 signal but the GM doesn't have time to care, he's got more important things. We need it simple in the work environment.

I use my 1080p television with my laptop frequently. I define the TV as the second monitor with 1080p resolution. Any applications I run on the HDTV are then dragged and dropped onto the second monitor. It's nice and sharp.

True it's sharp but one advantage of the low res is how big the fonts and everthing is. Now people can manual make things bigger but when the meeting is over and they go back to the laptop now they have to reverse the process and windows doesn't make it real easy.

Maybe what we need is a one button app that changes the res and fonts back and forth real easy for the masses. When the come in the room and plug in they execute the app?

This is a job for a macro recording / playback application. Try to use keyboard equivalents rather than mouse clicks in case you ever need to debug the script.

You'll be able to set this up as nothing more than a couple desktop shortcuts.

It's weird how everybody did this simple automation with batch files in DOS, but it's now almost a lost art. It's not intuitive with a GUI I guess.

Bump, seems like this problem should be common in the work place.

Hire a new set of employees.

This isn't helpful advice. Clearly the easiest solution is to just replace those PCs with Macs. At my office we all use Apple laptops and this just works without the user having to do anything special at all. ;)