In the Appearance system preference, there's a popup button to
determine the font size to not use text smoothing. Try change it
to the largest value possible, so smaller fonts will not be
displayed with the soft edge.
Forwarded (with comment), and his reply:
I suspect you've been there, but...
Yup- covers the range of 4 - 12 points. [In the magnifier] Non-
smoothed small fonts look like
they have a screen resolution ~30 DPI (I'm not exaggerating, try
it). Apple
apparently doesn't understand the difference between smooth edges and
feathered edges.
