[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Have you ever got a nice looking pic on your monitor then printed it out and got something looking hideously different?
Well, one solution is to colour calibrate your monitor, then calibrate your printer to closely match what you see on the screen. Hardware for doing this comes in at $500 at the low end.
I had done all this and regularly produced good prints, but then my printer had a meltdown-- basically past its use by date. I needed some prints urgently, so went up to Officeworks to buy a new printer, but saw that they had a printing service. I happened to have my colour profiled prints on a usb stick, so I gave them a go. Beautiful prints resulted, matching what my monitor displayed for about $1 for an A4 sheet. The guy didn't seem to know anything about colour profiles, but I presume the system they have has been set up by someone knowledgeable, so the system obviously read the colour profile and printed accordingly.
So why invest in a printer? Just ensure that your monitor is colour calibrated, ensure that you have a colour profile attatched to your file and get prints for a dollar a pop.
Geoff