Gamma correction - generally what looks good on a Mac, appears too dark on a PC and conversely, images created on a PC often look light and washed out on a Mac. Gamma is set by adjusting a numerical value - Macs have a default gamma setting of 1.8; on PCs the default is around 2.5 (but there are many variables). W3C has set a Web standard to 2.2 for all platforms (also suggested by CGSD back in 1998), creating an easy medium.
I followed the steps listed in Joe Gillespie's article on Palettes to make a gamma correction on my PC. The first thing that happened was everything got a lot brighter and I could distinguish darker shades a lot better. My browns don't look so red now, either.
Did you know the word "pixel" was created from picture element? Lynch and Horton mention this in an explanation of bit colour display.
My own display is set to 32-bit colour, but I discovered that it actually has the same number of colours as 24-bit display, the extra byte is for an alpha channel which optimises memory - 'The only reason this is done is that on the Intel 32-bit PCI/AGP/Memory data bus its more efficient to get at data that is "32-bit aligned". [with 24-bit data you often actually have to read the pixel's data twice--and then mask for the bits you are interested in]' (John Schilling, Scala, 2002)
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