Re: monitor calibration and color management

Brian,
The best and most accurate way to calibrate is with a hardware device, typically a colorimeter, and associated software. Two of the more popular systems are Gretag-Macbeths's Eye-One, and the one I use, Colorvision's Spyder 2 Pro (not the original Spyder, which had some significant flaws).
If you don't want to make the investment in a hardware calibration system, there are some "by eyeball" options. If you've got Photoshop, you've also installed something called Adobe Gamma. There are other by-eye software packages out there, but I since I haven't tried them, I can't comment much. Adobe Gamma works OK, after some practice, but even if you've got a good eye the results'll be less accurate than with a hardware device.
BTW, out of the box, Dell's laptops are notorious for being set to a very, very cold color temp. Be prepared for a much warmer looking display after calibration.
As far as printing goes, however, to complete the picture (sorry!) you need to understand a bit about color management to get what you see on the screen to reliably match what comes out of the printer.
Here're a couple of tutorials. The first is PS oriented (this ones PS-7, he has updates for changes relative to using CS or CS2). Ian Lyon's site.
Here's another more general one from Norman Koren's excellent site. Norman Koren's site. I'd recommend skipping down to the "Color Management Basics" section if you don't want your eyes to glaze over. Mr. Koren does like to be detailed and technical in his info.
Beware. If you haven't gone down this rabbit hole before, it might be a bit confusing. It's not rocket science, but there are some pitfalls. Among other things, you'll find out that most web browsers (all PC-based ones) are not "Color Aware", and can't reproduce colors acurately no matter what you do. For web display, it's always best to convert to sRGB (if not already in that color space) as that's sort of the least common denominator Windows assumed space.
Once a systems set, however, and assuming color aware software, it really does work.
If you have specific Q's, feel free to back-channel me so we don't clog up the NGDF with too much of this non-NG stuff.
BTW, on my monitor brought into a color aware viewer and assuming sRGB color space this does look just a tad light to my eye. If I assume Adobe RGB, it looks a bit better. Since your file isn't tagged, I don't know which is right.
Confused yet? " />
Scott