John,
Many thanks for your detailed and informative post. My current monitor is a Philips 170B 17" LCD, which I must have had for at least 10 years. Budget restraints do not allow for a replacement at the moment, so I am going down the route of buying a second hand calibrator. Hopefully this will give me the improvement I need.
As I am new to digital imaging I realise I have a lot to learn. My use of film has always led me to try to get the exposure correct in the camera so as not to waste film. I now need to learn to do this with digital. It seems, at the moment, to be a bit of a cheat to do too much post-processing, but perhaps I will change my view in the future. At least if I don't get the exposure correct, there is no film to waste.
I will continue to follow the forum, hopefully to pick up useful information and learn from it.
Cheers
Steve