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Let me add a little to what the others have said. First, you asked how to get "uniform spacing" for on-screen fonts.
Bonnie's answer, to use monospaced fonts, may not be correct for what you want. It is quite true that "monospaced" fonts by definition allocate an equal amount of space to each letter, but that means that the words look much more ragged in spacing. That makes sense, since an "i" will be given the same width as an "m" for example. However, if by "uniform spacing" you want letters and/or numbers that line up neatly in columns, then if you cannot use decimal tabulation a monospaced font may be for you.
By contrast, proportional type is designed to allocate the space required by individual letters to give a roughly even inter-letter spacing. Since different letters combine with various others in different ways (from an optical perspective), the hinting tables are built in the more complete font sets to instruct the font rendering engine how to space various common letter pairs. Further, really complete font sets often contain "expert sets" that contain various alternates, which often include alternate punctuation and "swash" characters, for example.
Microsoft, Adobe, and various other large font sellers have fonts that are specially drawn for on-screen use. Generally, these have much less contrast between thick and thin strokes than a similar font might that is designed to be printed on a higher-resolution device than a screen. Obviously, there are some families of type that have little stroke variation--the "Egyptian" style fonts are famous for this, as are many unadorned sans serif faces such as Helvetica. These fonts usually look clean on most screens today.
The trouble is that you must determine which device your audience will be using as you determine what fonts to use. Further complicating the problem is that if you are delivering Acrobat docs that may be viewed onscreen or printed, if you use fonts that are not in the basic assortment that most folks have you have to pay particular attention to be sure the Acrobat file embeds the fonts.
Outside of the tech writing venue, other writers often must pay far more attention to type. For example, when I'm wearing my marketing communications hat, I may have to produce a brochure that has maximum impact. For that purpose, I use different tools than I do when I am writing documentation, and I pay much more attention to fonts.
Frankly, I think most tech writers are better off to use well-thought-out templates that specify type and thereafter ignore it, concentrating instead on the content of the document. A decent designer can create stylesheets for each kind of output you need to create that will pay proper attention to issues such as typography and adherence to a corporate style so that you may be free to focus on the writing itself.
In fact, this is a common theme among those who when this topic comes up will snort derisively and mutter about "font fondlers." Although type fascinates me, I do understand that preoccupation of some when it comes to tech writing.
To be on the safe side, though, if you lack good stylesheets for your onscreen products, I'd stick with one of the fonts designed to look good in low resolution. The Microsoft type site, I believe, has a bit on this.
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