Monitor calibration with a Spyder

OK, I got a problem here. I don't know if my monitor is calibrated correctly or not. I work an image on my main computer and it looks great, nice and vibrant, colorful. I view it on my laptop which is calibrated as well and it looks like crap. The greens are all brown and ugly and what not. You guys all see it as blah too from my last post of Oneonta Gorge. But, when I view your images on my laptop the look great, nice and vibrant, etc.

What I find strange is when I calibrated my old CRT monitor it had me play around with contrast and brightness during the calibration process. The same program doesn't even mention contrast or brightness when calibrating my new LCD. Is this normal?

BTW, my monitor is hooked up using the digital inputs. I've heard some people have better luck with the monitor hooked up to the analog inputs. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Eric,
I'm no expert, but I feel your pain. Was there two ways to set up your calibration? There's usually one of those easy setup wizards and one for experts. I'm still not sure about mine for some reason.
Also, just a thought. Did you use the drivers fro your monitor that the OS provided or did you download the latest drivers from Samsung's website?

I used the drivers on the Samsung CD. I'll download the latest and see what it does.

The calibration utility asks what type of monitor, CRT or LCD. WHen you pick CRT it then goes through a process of determining black and white with the contrast and brightness. If you pick LCD (which I have now), it skips that section completely. Never does it ask you to adjust contrast or brightness. Seems weird to me.

I use the Spyder2Pro and it recommends leaving the brightness and contrast at factory defaults, but it does give me the option to change the brightness and contrast if necessary. Which Spyder version are you using, and have you downloaded the latest update for it? My software mentions that you can make adjustements if the shades of back to grey or white to grey don't appear as they should near the begining or calibration. I also adjust the monitor using RGB sliders (I'm using a Samsung 204B).

Another thing to be aware of is to make sure that any "auto color" "auto contrast" or "magic monitor" setting are turned off. I've found these will screw up a calibration because they override settings if you manually adjust them.

I'm using the original spyder. I just updated all my drivers and downloaded the latest version of the software for this spyder and re-calibrated. We'll see what happens.

Good tips about the auto settings Ryan. I made sure they are all off.

Eric, do you have Adobe Gamma loading at startup on the laptop? There maybe a conflict.

Jim, nope, its not loaded. I made sure of that. I can tell ya though, the LCD on my workstation is much brighter than my notebook or any other computer I've worked with.