Hi,
Reading the various questions and answers on the forum has been most interesting, particularly, which Colorimeter is the best choice.
Normally I set up the monitor using the humble Mac display calibrator (expert mode), if done with care and in the normal work/lighting conditions I found it works well and prints from my Epson R2400 are very near to the screen image.
This drastically changed when I moved from a G4 Mac and CRT monitor to an iMac, the brightness of the LCD screen really was difficult to tune to a similar print output. Once again explored the options for a colorimeter. But it seems to me, this is only the beginning, one also has to adopt full screen to print colour management to obtain good print reproduction. Not a cheap option looking at the cost of Spectrophotometer systems etc. I would like to go down that road but after buying some extra camera gear it is not an option. It would be good to hear other points of view!

For those that may be interested, my solution was to download a black monochrome test image; this had a 21 step wedge plus a graduated ramp, also two very testing shots with deep shadows and pale highlights and one with very smooth grey gradations.
After carefully adjusting the Mac display calibrator in the correct working light I opened the test image and adjusted the screen brightness so that the step wedge shows a good range from white to black, pay particular attention to the last two divisions of black. I then printed out a copy in Photoshop, after drying the print is viewed in daylight to find how many divisions of the wedge printed correctly, either too light or dark. My own problem was the screen image always printed too dark. Using Levels gamma adjustment I made a series of test strips from the wedge, each at different settings and printed these out, I found a good match to be a gamma of 1.30. Printing the whole A4 test image at this level provided a really good print.
This works with colour or monochrome printing. So now when an image looks correct on screen I make a levels adjustment layer and set this to gamma 1.30 before making a print. Maybe not so much fun, but very cheap! If anyone would like the address for the Test image let me know.