Cleartype is provably more clear. However, it needs to be told the proper order of the colored lcd elements across your LCD screen, otherwise it will look worse (hence the rainbow fringe).

The joke around the time it was being patented was that it's essentially the same technology as the first Apple ][ graphics modes, since that used a hack on the standard TV colorburst and the available colors were positionally dependant...to get white, you had to turn TWO adjacent pixels on...

-brendan