Quote - True,most of the people looking at the images have uncalibrated monitors that are set up differently than mine, but it's nice to know that the image I see on my monitor is a close to being "accurate"  (or the standard) as you can get for brightness, contrast, and color, gamma, etc. Using a color calibration device is probably as close to being "in the middle" and getting an image that looks good on most systems that you can get.

That's my thinking, too.  Plus, I sell prints (of my photos, usually, not renders) and while I can't control how they look online, I do want the prints to look their best.  I spend a lot of time adjusting the color, contrast, etc. so I'd really like some consistency to make sure I'm not making them worse.  ;-)

FWIW, new monitors/laptop displays look really bright and saturated to me, compared to the ones I was used to.  I think it's the iPad influence.  The whole world is going tablet-crazy.