Question : Problem: Printer calibration (on a budget!)

QUESTION:
What steps can I take to calibrate a cheap colour laserjet or flatpanel monitor?

BACKGROUND:
My partner is trying to start her own business and I've offered to help her out with producing artwork for stuff like business cards, adverts in magazines etc.  I'm using an LCD monitor and a cheap colour laserjet to produce draft copies and am really struggling to calibrate either of these to the colours actually printed by a professional printer.  I'm not looking for perfection but when I take a colour that the pantone swatch says should be a soft purple, on screen it comes out bright purple and on print it comes out almost blue!

The equipment we have is as follows:
- A full pantone colour reference booklet
- A cheap, Konica Minolta Magicolor 2300W printer
- A DELL 1504FP flat panel monitor
- A Windows 2003 server (to which the printer is attached via the parallel port and shared over the network)
- Windows XP client PCs with Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Illustrator CS

THINGS TRIED SO FAR:
- I've downloaded an ICC profile for a similar model of printer but don't understand ICC profiles,  or how I can apply them to a printer.
- I've gone into the printer settings and disabled its colour matching system which produces better results.

Answer : Problem: Printer calibration (on a budget!)

As the 2300W is a GDI or "windows" printer, it uses the windows  ICC profile for the monitor, so you need to set up the ICC for the monitor first.
If you right click on an ICC profile, it will give you an "install " option, and windows should automatically associate it with the monitor (if it doesn't, you can usually manually associate it in the Graphics card driver)

You then need to set up the profiles in Adobe under colour management.

Pleae note that flat screens are less colour accurate than CRTs,  and you will also need to install the ICC profile for your scanner.

Even if you manage to link all the devices' profiles and get reasonably accurate results, when you send the work electonically to an outside printer, the results are likely to very enormously for several reasons:

1. Most professional printers use MACs, colorsync, and Pantone certified printers.(though many of them can`t be bothered, - define "professional")
2. Colour management only really works well in a closed environment.
3.Their printers will have a different colour Gamut (range) to yours, and it will usually be far more limited.

The best bet is to produce hardcopy that approximates what you want, and send it with any electronic files, stating that this is what you want, with the pantone references.
Pantone, as hdhondt says, is for offset litho  printers, which have a different gamut to scanners, screens, lasers, inkjets, dyesubs, etc.
Unfortunately all of these devices use different technologies and media to produce output, and they all have colours which they can produce, which  others cannot.