Pretty soon it'll be difficult to FIND a CRT as more manufacturers are dropping production altogether. With the added benefit of taking up less space, less eyestrain as there's no "scanning" to make the picture (resulting in less headaches), and using less power consumption, it's what most people want these days. And more and more the viewable angle is getting better - it used to be that you pretty much had to be EXACTLY DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE VIEWING AREA before it started going hazy. hings are much better - though I DO agree about the even color distribution on most monitors, thought it really hasn't been a problem for me yet.

Yeah, out of the box TFT's tend to be too bright or contrasty, so they have to be adjusted.

Any TFT that has an 800:1 or higher contrast ratio (this is important!) is good for critical color correcting - it will have a wider gamut display than CMYK printing so you will be able to determine all useable colors.

And get your hands on ANY calibrating hardware - anything with the "eye" that you lay on the screen to calibrate it with the softeware - I've got the X-Rite version and love it, and there are many others that are great.