The monitor contrast ratio should be set close to the media you output to. Glossy paper is somewhere arount 250-300:1 and matte is much lower. High contrast ratio spec'd monitors are not required for photo editing. It's more important to have no change in the image "density" with viewing angle and a monitor that's easily and accurately calibrated.
If you have the contrast ratio set too high and you edit so that the image looks nice on your monitor your prints will look flat. Same idea if your monitor brightness is too high, such as the factory default, your prints will be really dark.
Another tip is that if your monitor is the typical Dell you should have the brightness turned down to around 15% (plus or minus a couple of percent depending on your room lighting). If it looks dim then it's probably set right. It takes a few days of use to get comfortable with a monitor properly set up for photo editing. Most (all) monitors are way too bright at the factory setting.
Also, what browser are you using? if your calibrating to full gamut Firefox works really well but only if you flip their hidden setting to color manage untagged images. There's a simple add-on that provides access to the switch without having to enter the hidden settings screens. FF is color managed, but if someone posts an untagged aRGB image it will look awful unless you change the setting. Also, if you have a Smugmug, Zenfolio, Flickr, whatever account, they typically use Adobe Flash Player for slideshows instead of HTML5, so the slideshow images will look awful on a wide gamut monitor and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it unless you flip to an sRGB gamut monitor profile.
