I need help on the basics ( maybe the intermediates) of printing my photos with the best quality. I have calibrated my monitor ( a new Dell flatscreen) using the softwear that came with it. Questions: I have no color management selected in PE and no color management selected in my printer manager ( which by the way is an HP 940C). I use HP, Kodak, Ilford, usually premium paper. My print colors are usually off with the monitor. Any suggestions?

Pat,
The HP driver is not very flexible ( compared with Epson, anyway ). It does a good job by not giving you a lot of choices to mess it up. My wife gets her best results using "limited color management" in Elements ( that uses the sRGB colorspace that HP prefers ). She prints on HP Premium Glossy paper, using "Printer Color Management" , as the output space profile in Print Preview. I think the real variable in your situation is the accuracy of the profile of your display .
Have you installed the profile of your Dell display as the system default ? You will need a decent profile to have a change of matching your screen with Elements.
<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/1403e.htm>

:-)

Brent