So I picked up a new Macbook for doing presentations and generally goof off down the local coffee shop to do some 'work'. (I'm self employed)

This thing is great and all but I'm not all that impressed with the screen.....no matter how much I mess about with the brightness and contrast it never looks all that good......EhMac imparticular renders up awful.....very very white, red looks washed out. Am I being too picky about what is essentially a consumer laptop ?
I use a 20" Apple Cinema Display for work so I'm thinking I've just been spoiled.

Anyone else care to comment on their Macbook screen ?

Our Macbook looks just like the LCD imac but alittle crisper because of the gloss screen. I might be used to the macbook screen by now because I think I thought the same as you when we first brought it home and compared the two screens

Hard to say about the colour. Might be best to compare it side by side with the Cinema display.

Dude, did you calibrate the screen?

Go into the Display System Preferences screen and select colour. Then select Calibrate... run through that and you should be fine.

Dude, did you calibrate the screen?

Go into the Display System Preferences screen and select colour. Then select Calibrate... run through that and you should be fine.

It said the factory profile for the display can not be found

A problem I assume ?

turns out there was a problem.....got onto to Applecare and it was a PRAM and something else issue.....seems good to go now

phew!

Wow...I haven't actually heard of a case where zapping the pram did anything beneficial :)

no, me neither.....everytime someone has mentioend to me to do it to clear up a problem it has never worked.
Amazingly it did for this.
When I had the problem the file for the color profile (library/color sync/profiles/displays) was missing....after the 4 fingered wizardry and 3 chimes, as if like magic, it returned to the folder!

Bravo Applecare and your computer wizardry!

Do the advanced display calibration very carefully while kinda squinting/blurring your eyes. (sounds weird but it helps).

Adjust the slider until the apple blends in as much as possible, then move the tint adjustment until it matches the background.

I set my Gamma at the 2.2 "PC" setting and white point at 6500K.

I find that this makes the screen much nicer to look at.

I do this on other peoples Macs all the time. It seems Apple consumer laptops in general have poor color rendition without calibration. I'd like to try one of the display calibration tools sometime.

How do you get to the advanced calibration?

If you're trying to compare a laptop's LCD to a recent, quality desktop LCD, then you're making a mistake, IMO.

My MacBook's LCD is pretty nice, but after working on my 20" LG L204WT, it looks horrible. Pretty much every laptop LCD looks terrible by contrast.

How do you get to the advanced calibration?

system pref > display > color > calibration > expert

How do you get to the advanced calibration?
here's a screen shot.