From my Own experience and Knowledge, those that do photography as an income, work on photographs in Photoshop professionally, artwork etc, all use traditional CRT monitors, not LCD screens for the specific reason you have stated. The inability to properly profile the monitor, although with the newer LCD's and in the future, this probably will change the scale a bit.

Remember, if you calibrate a monitor to optimally display for you, doesn't mean that customers are going to have their screens calibrated properly does it, so the problem with differences between what you see, post on the intenet and what they see will always be subjective won't it.

I'm still using a Mistubishi Diamond Pro 17" Monitor and will probably replace it within the next year and move up to a 21" Monitor as they have moved into a more affordable price range for me to start considering it, also this one is about 8 years old now, but is still very good colour displayed on it. I am awaiting my Eye-One Photo calibration at present and will wait to see what difference it makes to profileing the monitor and display of photos online.

It really isn't marketing hype, proper profiling does make a huge difference, even printers need to be profiled properly to produce their best as well.

Hope that helps in some way.