Keep the chin up Ken. You're definately not alone in scratching heads over "what the hell happened there" situations.
Another thing to consider too is the image you are getting on your laptop. Laptop screens are fickle things and notoriously difficult to use to judge image quality, whether capturing or processing. I've pitched quite a few Jupiters that initially looked pretty good on the laptop screen during capture, but once I saw them on the CRT
....in the bin. Do you have your screen set to full brightness and if you have adobe photoshop on it have you done the Adobe gamma adjust? It's not much but every bit helps.