"I would expect my color perception to be much better with a CRT."

And so would I.  The gradients also appear much, much smoother on a CRT monitor. 

My wife's main complaint about the laptop's LCD screen is that she can see individual pixels, without trying, but that's maybe cos she's long-sighted.  Still, tho' I'm short-sighted, wearing glasses I find that up-close I can easily discern pixels on an LCD, too, but not on the CRT; is that perhaps due to the mask geometry being set up to blend pixel borders smoothly?