I have 3 laptops in my hand at the moment. One Old Toshiba, a DELL and a Sony Vaio. The only one that delivers a crisp image to my external monitor is the Dell. Both others have blurry, bad quality image. I wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same issue, and if and how it can be fixed.
The connection is done via VGA cable.
Resolution is set to the appropriate supporting one for the external monitor (1680 * 1050). I tried at 60 and 75 hz (these are the only options I get available)
All drivers are updated to the latest available.
* UPDATE * Just to answer the question. I haven't found out the reason, but it sure is not the cable. I have bought a new laptop since (I insisted on looking at the external monitor signal quality before buying it) and it seems that some laptops just have a bad signal, for whatever reason. So my suggestion to all, plug an external monitor to the laptop before buying it, or at least make sure you are allowed to change / give back the laptop if it does not offer a good signal.