Here's the promised rant...
Well actually it's not too bad. The Spyder3 is easy to use and the results are acceptable to my eyes, although really it shouldn't be a subjective thing at all.
If anything, the calibration has replaced a very cool colour balance (with all monitor and graphics card controls at their default values) with a slightly warm balance. It's rather like going from Ektachrome to Fuji Velvia.
My manual calibration was OK but it was difficult to get a uniform balance throughout the whole tonal range. I'm not 100% convinced that the Spyder3 has actually done much better - it's just a little different - but I'll live with it for now.
At least it's not obviously wrong.
