"Writers shouldn't have to become system programmers and experts in type setting to make their notebooks look good."

I don't agree with your expectation that manufacturers should support an operating system that has been superseded twice in the last 7 years, hasn't received much more than a security patch in the last 5, and has been completely unsupported in the U.S. since Jan. 20.

I am a new user of Mathematica and have zero problems formatting my text and computational notebooks from the drop-down Format menu.

It doesn't help me much. I'm thinking of buying a new computer (but the old one is still working great after 10 years!) Martijn's post makes me worry that a new computer will not completely eliminate the problem.

One of the problems with fonts is that different fonts can display with quite different sizes even if they have the same FontSize specification.

I wonder how many different fonts and font Styles are used by WRI in Mathematica? Their entire display quality might be more stable if they restricted themselves to a small set of fonts that displayed with a uniform size, with the same FontSize specification, and standardized their use over versions. If a user writes style sheets and uses other fonts then he's responsible.

There's no reason for WRI to use a different font just because they can. Writers shouldn't have to become system programmers and experts in type setting to make their notebooks look good.