When comparing MT OCR A Extended vs Microsoft Verdana, the Slant community recommends Microsoft Verdana for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Microsoft Verdana is ranked 105th while MT OCR A Extended is ranked 116th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to distinguish characters
You can clearly tell the difference between those troublesome characters like apostrophes and quotes. Each character is clearly (there's that word again) different from each other to make machine reading easier and work for humans as well.
Pro Free with Windows
Pro Compact while light
Packs lots of information into your screen space while remaining clear and never looking crowded.
Pro Renders perfectly at all sizes
Again, particularly in Windows
Pro Looks absolutely gorgeous in Windows
Looks good elsewhere as well, but the world-class hinting here really comes out with the windows rasterizer (probably optimized for it).
Cons
Con Not monospaced
-if that is an absolute must for you. But don't assume it is until you've tried without...