Strong Colors / Discussions

I don't think there really is a solution. It's possible to calibrate your system so that what you see on screen is what you get on your printer, but most monitors and printers out there are not calibrated.
There even are differences between Macs and PCs with regard to their normal gamma values (brightness/contrast).
Still, calibrating may be useful, as at least you are sure that your computer is not completely wrong.
Some software comes with a software calibration tool (eg. Adobe Photoshop elements) but the better solution is hardware based calibration, which actually uses a colour meter measuring the colours of your system (the software shows a defined colour and the meter measures how much your system deviates from it) and then produces a profile correcting this.
Unfortunately one-time calibration is better than nothing, but as colours change over time, you actually should re-calibrate from time to time.
Which reminds me that I didn't do so for several months now...

thanks for that, Laurenz. If i understand correctly, calibration would primarily be done to ensure the printer and screen produce the same image, ya? So it is still not possible to determine what image your audience sees on their computer eg when they scroll through ipernity (unlike print photography, where the photographer controls the outcome)

Ideally, if everyone would calibrate their systems, the result should be more or less the same.
But as the vast majority of PCs is not calibrated, there may be vast differences in output.
There also are differences in the "normal" specs for Macs and PCs: for all I know gamma is usually set to 1.8 on a Mac and 2.2 on a PC and color temperature is also calibrated differently.
Not sure whether there has been any change since you can use Windows on Apple systems, but traditinally, an image that looks normal on a Mac would appear too dark on a Windows PC.