LCD display, sRGB & color management

Not sure this is the best place for this... but i am
running out of ideas.

Long story short:
- bought a laptop configured with the NVidia GeForce Go FX 5600
- out of the box, the LCD display color space is abysmal
(ie. colors are all washed out) while the output CRT signal
is perfect.

This problem can be somewhat corrected by running Optical
(display measurement using the Spyder). From what i can
tell, all that the Optical software is doing is installing
a color profile file (.icm) and assigning it to the device.
Now here are my questions:

- how *exactly* does XP's color management operate ? and i
mean : what does it change at hardware level ? looking at
the NVidia DAC registers, apparently the color correction
is purely linear.

- am i under the wrong impression that "modern" LCD
displays should be sRGB compliant "out of the box" ?

- is there anything other reason why a brand new laptop LCD
display would have a wide (and i really mean wide... the
blue response is near linear while red & green are close to
a .5 gamma before correction) deviation ?

- could it be that i need a driver for the LCD panel to fix
this color problem ?

- is it customary for laptop manufacturers to provide an
icm file for their LCD panels ?

thanks in advance.

M.