I do know some graphic artists as well, and they will flat out refuse to use any LCD because of their more limited color representation.
Did they look at any of the latest TFT-models, or just the ones that appeared first on the market?
On a CRT, the colors change also by surrounding light that falls onto the glass (a dark color gets lighter), so you can't really make a comparison.
And how do you know that CRTs produce the perfect color?
It could be that CRTs misrepresent the colors for so long (years and years), so that we are used to those colors, and that when a TFT has different looks of a color, that we all say: "TFTs are useless, because they misrepresent the colors, compared to a CRT".
Keep in mind that it could be the other way around.
Also keep in mind that you can reduce the brightness and contrast on a desktop TFT, to reduce the bright light that a TFT produces (you could do that so that the lightintensity matches a laptop TFT).
I was sceptical at first too, I admit it, but when I got my first TFT, I was sold.
I'm never going back to buying a CRT.
My brother's CRT (19 inch) produces less sharp images than my 19 inch TFT.
A CRT's pixel shines onto the surrounding pixels (by being slightly reflected by the glass, back into the screen), so the surrounding pixels get a slight change in their color-representation and automatically produces a small anti-aliasing on it's own.
TFT don't do that, because they don't have glass in front of them.
On my TFT, a pixel is really sharp and square, when you look very close.
I haven't seen any CRT that does this.