Screen Calibration (Dell Inspiron laptop)

Hello.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with 17in. 1920 x 1200 screen.

I would like to calibrate this screen with some form of hardware.

The laptop is running Vista and has a nvidia geforce 8600m gt garphics card.

Does anybody know if the spyder2express or Pantone Huey will do the trick for me?

Many thanks

These devices should get you reasonably close to a calibrated display. Laptop screens are hard to calibrate accurately since they generally do not offer the same degree of color and contrast control as desktop models. Still, in my opinion "close enough" is good enough. There will always be differences between screens and prints due to the nature of the media. Calibration will bring you into the ballpark but you will likely need some additional tweaking from there in any case.

Guy

I use the Spyder2Express, and my prints match my monitor as closely as a transmissive image will match a reflective image.
Having said that, I sure wouldn't do any critical editing with a laptop just because the monitor is calibrated.

Hi, I have nearly the same laptop, and get great results from the Spyder2Suite, a step up from the Express. It used to cost $150, but with the 3 series out now, you can get the Spyder2Suite at AbesOfMaine.com for $79! It has more flexibility than the Express.

Here it is:
http://www.abesofmaine.com/item.do?item=CNSPYDER2

I agree with John. I have exactly the same configuration you have and use a Huey, but I check everything when I get back to the "big rig" (I use the laptop on trips only).

Laptop screens are notorious to calibrate accurately, since the majority of the PC based ones are typically 6 bit and can only represent 262,144 colors simultaneously. This means that when you try to show a color or tone that is not in the palette, it will give you a dithered rendition. The low cost LCDs also suffer from the same problem. Whenever possible it's best to use an 8 bit S-IPS monitor, which can be calibrated to a high degree of accuracy and can display 16.7M colors. Don't plan on using this monitor for gaming or video editing, as the response times are considerably longer and you will see ghosting.