My suggestion would be if you want to do color management for prints to sell and color is critical enough for you then I would invest in a CRT not a flat screen/lcd. Brightness and accuracy of the calibration is an issue with the flat panels. Depending on your angles, the image can have different brightnesses and since you can't (and shouldn't) stick anything on your monitor, I really don't think the calibration can be as good as it should be. To me there are just too many factors involved that I would just get a crt for this purpose. If you really insist on an LCD, then you do need the Optical software with the Spyder (if you go with Spyder). I haven't used the MacBeth to know the differences though. One day, I'll borrow one and see if I notice any different results. Personally, I think you will get more true results from a cheapo eMachines monitor than you will from an expensive LCD. I'm sure there will be plenty of people that will tell me their LCDs are great. I'm sure they are, but you not read any good color management book that will tell you an LCD is just as good, if not better than a CRT. At the moment, CRTs will be the choice for true colormanagement. It is just a matter of how correct you want your images to match the printed output.
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