MatthewHSE - 12:11 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

I've dealt with this kind of problem before, too. I just designed a site on my laptop, and was astonished when I viewed it on my desktop LCD monitor. I had expected the colors to be pretty much the same between those two monitors since they basically use the same technology, but there was a drastic difference. What with differences between monitor types, brightness, contrast, color profiles, and other factors, I've finally taken the "if it's close, it's good enough" approach. The problem, of course, is getting the clients to see it that way... ;)

Why all this trouble when there are only 216 colours to choose from.

I assume you're talking about "web-safe" colors? If so, that's pretty much out of date. I've never seen a computer and/or monitor (well, not in the last five years at least) that wasn't capable of millions of colors. I just use hex values and leave it at that.