I'd say the best of these fonts - Verdana, Georgia, Andale Mono, etc. - are the ones developed by *Monotype* for Microsoft, although Microsoft's own Trebuchet and Comic Sans (both developed by Vincent Connaire) aren't bad either.

The real winners from the Apple-Microsoft TrueType deal, ever since TrueType came out, have been Microsoft, and Microsoft's customers, who get decent fonts that look good on screen and in print.

Arial is still eyeball-scarring, though, and should be forbidden for any use in print or on screen.

I don't know if Microsoft & Apple have already made efforts, but it would greatly enhance the web from a visual perspective if both companies could work towards creating additional fonts on both platforms beyond the usual Arial, Times, Helvetica, Verdana. Not necessarily a slew of wacky fonts, but adding more classy typefaces, even old english, script, block typefaces that could be rendered for headlines, etc... As the two largest OS providers out there, it only makes sense, right?