I am not sure if this is ther right place for this but....

I just got a new computer (laptop) for my new job.

Wonderful fast machine plenty of memory and horsepower to do anything I want.  Great monitor...

All this is wonderful... but here is the problem.  All my art looks completely different on the monitor than on my old laptop... I checked my destop (which I have barely touched for a year and come to find that it (my art... any graghic) looks different than either of the laptops.  hmmm which is the right setting?  Is there a "right"?  Is there a "norm" or standard and how do I check is my monitor is close to the "Standard"

Now my new lap top every thing is brighter almost over exposed... yeah, I know I could just change the brightness on this one but the whole things got me wondering about display standards.... but I am not sure which of the three (or two of the three) monitors I am looking at is "wrong".

The frustrating thing is some of the art look pretty darn good (not surprisingly on the machine that created it) but kinda sucky on the other machines.

Anyone have any idea's on setting displays to a "standard" - how do you check it?

The monitor probably needs to be calibrated. 

This link is from Jasc but it gives some good tips on calibration - http://www.jasc.com/support/kb/articles/monitor.asp

Although this deals with Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop has the same gamma thingy for adjusting your monitor :-)

Actually a better try might be here - http://www.colorwizzard.com/lcdtest/index.html

Sweet! Thank you!

Just google monitor calibration and take it from there.  There are tons of articles offering theory and step-by-step instructions on how to proceed.

Most PC monitors theoretically use sRGB as their working color space. Needless to say, the amount of variation is considerable from manufacturer to manufacturer, model to model and even in the same production run. This is something that most office grunts don't need to worry about - until, that is, they get stuff professionally printed and then moan that it doesn't look anything like their screen. Usually they've corrected their images to look nice on their monitor, instead of adjusting their monitor to display the images correctly...

...so, what they said above is correct: calibration is the answer. If you don't have a budget for this, there are a number of free utilities which require you to visually compare things and get them looking the same (e.g. Adobe Gamma, which comes with Photoshop): better than doing nothing.

If you do have a budget, there are OK-ish solutions for under $70 (colormunki, huey) - these are better than (inherently inaccurate and inconsistent) visual matching. A much better solution for around $100 is the X-Rite i1 Display 2 - this will also measure ambient lighting conditions and do its thing in that context.

To get even better you're into professional systems with a four-figure price tag, and unless you have a really expensive pro monitor that wouldn't make sense.

depending on the age (probably not a problem in your case..but I go waaay back..;) the technologies of the desktop and laptop monitors are different.

however, since it's not the 90s anymore, the ticket is probably that your laptop is set up (as most are) with the primary idea of making the battery last as long as possible. Most modern laptops have a brightness key combo (on Dells, it's Fn+ arrows, on Lenovo's, it's FN+....dang, don't have one around...you get the idea...;)

I think everything else has been covered.

thank you everyone for your help and input