You install the software, plug this thing into a usb port, and stick it on your monitor. The spyder 3 elite didn't offer enough improvement to justify the cost, and at 159$ for the pro with a education discount, i couldn't pass it up. I believe the spyder is currently the best on the market, I've had the Spyder 2 pro, and now the Spyder 3 Pro. There are many calibration tools out there, from companies such as Gretag Mcbeth, Datacolor, and a few others. What happened? Simple, your screen was not profiled, so what you thought you saw on the screen wasn't what colors were really there. But what happens when you fire up photoshop or gimp or some other image editor, work on an image, and then go to print it.just to have it come out too dark, too light, too red, too green.etc. Well yeah, because your eyes adjust to it, as long as it's relatively close to good, so you think its good. "But my monitor looks fine" you're saying. These are usually set to display the web standard color profile, sRGB pretty well, but suck for anything else. Same brightness, same contrast, same back light intensity, same color temperature settings. LCDs/CRTs/Televisions come from the factory all set pretty much the same way. Now for the review.Ī short introduction to the spyer 3 Pro and why you want one if you're an artist or photographer: So after battling UPS customer service on the phone for 3 days, I finally get my Spyder 3 today, was supposed to be delivered friday, for some reason they lost it friday and had to reschedule to monday.whatever I hate UPS.