What's the point of using @font-face if it looks awful on Windows?

I used to use @font-face an awful lot (while developing on my mac) and now on PC I see it looks awful.

I've tried searching on stack overflow and I 开发者_JS百科see to make sure hinting is on (it is). It doesn't help at all though.

I hate cufon because it has the burst of unstyled content.

For most professional projects, say sites above $7,000 budget, do you use @font-face and just ignore the fact it looks awful? Or do you use cufon or something else? I have a lot of big projects that need to be perfect in this area.

I understand there are some 'hacks' but it still isn't airtight like it should be.

Thanks

In this regard, the only thing you can do is test extensively.

Pick fonts that look decent at various sizes and test on PCs. There are a number of decent fonts that are compatible.

Also, consider using the Google Fonts api. Their stuff renders pretty well: http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/

Font Squirrel has decent fonts too: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ On their site, they have a view function that allows you to test it.