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Rating:  - Works as advertised
Color calibration is a necessity for any serious amateur digital photographer. What is the point of spending valuable time in Photoshop or other software fine-tuning white balance, brightness, contrast, color saturation, and so forth, if your monitor is not calibrated correctly?
While the Spyder2 Express lacks many of the features of professional grade color calibration products, it works as advertised. It is also relatively inexpensive and simple to use. I have found that it significantly improves the rendition of skin tones in particular. It also produces more precise results when adjusting highlights and shadows. The installation of the software took about five minutes, and each calibration run takes about the same amount of time.
It is, however, important to precisely follow the instructions that come with the product. All other color calibration products installed on the computer need to be turned off (for example, Adobe Gamma); this can be done, for example, by using the Windows MSCONFIG utility. Moreover, calibration is best carried out in a room that is dark or only dimly lit.
I have also found that laying my Dell 19" LCD monitor flat on the table ensures the closest possible contact between the calibration device and the screen. Under no circumstances should the suction cups be pressed onto an LCD monitor, as this can quite easily destroy some of the pixels.
A final note: the benefits of calibrating your monitor will be negated to a considerable extent if you use a photo lab that applies its own software-based adjustments to your image files, or that does not calibrate its printing equipment correctly. If accurate color and grayscale are important to you, there is no substitute for working with a quality (possibly professional) lab or printing service. If you are printing your photos yourself, you obviously need to pay attention to the calibration of your printer.
Rating:  - Does NOT work with multiple displays!
I bought this product without doing a lot of research on it first, so I thought I'd write about this so other people won't make the same mistake. If you are a multiple monitor user (dual, triple etc) DON'T BUY THIS VERSION. You have to get the Spyder3 Pro version (which of course costs almost twice as much). Thankfully amazon's return system is pretty painless, so I'll be dropping it in the mail tomorrow. There really needs to be a better explanation of this in the product description to cut down on confusion. Other than that, the software calibrated ONE of my monitors perfectly, so if you only have one monitor, it's easy to use and pretty fast. It gets 3 stars for not supporting multiple displays though.
Rating: - No brainer.....works great
Used Spyder 2 Express on 20" lcd with total satisfaction.
Could visibly see 2% deviation from full black/white easily.
An easy set up and go no brainer....good value for the $$ IMO
Rating: - Glad I bought this
I read a lot about monitor calibration and asked several people their opinions before purchasing this product. I found good and bad reviews on every product out there. In the end I went with this one because a friend had purchased it and was very happy with it and the price was affordable. I have calibrated once so far and have been happy with it. The advice I received was to calibrate at night when you can make the room totally dark so the ambient light does not effect the colors on your monitor. I would recommend this product to anyone in need of an inexpensive monitor calibration software.
Rating: - Helps a lot on laptop, probably not needed for good LCDs.
Good tool. Doesn't make that much difference in LCDs but made a huge difference on my Dell laptop.
Look into the Microsoft Control Panel color applet if you use a docking station.
OVERALL, seems to be a good device and helps give you some piece of mind.
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