Ok, so thanks to a recent thread, I have managed to get my Computer window view settings to stick, and further worked out how to stop Desktop from reappearing on my sidebar (both from editing .plist files).
One more thing that has always annoyed me - the OS X default 'Color LCD' calibration is quite nasty. When you see how much better (opinion of course) ones can be made, especially in terms of the font smoothing, you never want to go back. But the system appears to start up in that calibration, or at least one very much like it.
So, has anyone worked out how to change that, or is it something that can't be done? Thinking maybe it was like the default desktop picture and just called something specific in a certain location, I went through /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays and found one item, called Color LCD-4020701 or some number like that.
I tried replacing this one with my own calibration renamed to that, and then logging out, but it still went back to the ridiculously bright and hard to look at settings! Now there are also calibrations in /System/Library/ColorSync, but for one thing I'm not so keen on messing with that, and for another, there is nothing obviously referring to displays.
Has anyone ever tried this ... or even better, succeeded

?