Digital BW, The Print

I should start off by stating that I'm new to digital photography
as well as the group and that my terminology may be a little sloppy. 
I've recently purchased a new computer & monitor.  I am trying to
calibrate my monitor (a Lacie 319) with the spyder2pro system.  Adobe
Gamma has been unchecked in the startup manager and I'm using the most
recent version of spyder software (2.1).  I place the monitor on
default settings of 100 Brightness and 50 contrast and let the spyder
go through the series of calibration steps.  Following calibration
there's a "before/after" option to compare uncalibrated & calibrated
profiles, the color of the screen shifts slightly but the Brightness
does not change dramatically.  I was a little surprised since I
thought that screens are typically too bright.  Black& white prints on
my Epson r2400 have nice highlight tones, but shadow detail seems
reduced when comparing prints to the monitor.  As a result I set the
monitor to 50B and 50C recalibrated with the same results--no
noticeable shifts in brightness slight shifts in image color (I also
tried 0B and 50C; same results).   Do these results seem weird?   Am I
missing some obvious setting that is preventing Brightness from being
controlled by the spyder2 profile?  Is the video card conflicting with
the spyder or with the monitor?
   I also noticed you can increase Brightness through the video card
settings (nVidia Geforce 7800 GTX).  "Additional" brightness through
the video card (set to 125%) and the screens setting at 100B produce a
"washed out" picture.  Following calibration the profile brought the
screen back to more realistic colors.  Can anyone suggest a way to
confirm optimal profile settings?  Thanks for any ideas and your help.  

marc