MacBook Pro 15 2008 screen washed out and pale

I just bought a MacBook Pro 15.4, late 2008 model. The screen is quite wishy-washy, pale and lacking contrast. It's set to the default colour profile, 'Colour LCD'. I played with the calibration settings but that just makes it worse. I was wondering if there was a colour profile I could use that might improve the quality/density of the colour, or is it just the fact the screen is 6 years old so it's dying?
Thanks in advance

Thanks for the suggestion, but I want a software solution. I'm not about to pay 100 quid or more for a Spyder. What I'm trying to do is improve the visual appearance of colours, so I need a way to tune the temperature, white point etc manually - something better than the built-in control panel one.
I found an app called SuperCal (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8142/supercal) which seems to fit the bill, but it's tricky to get everything looking right and in fact, one stage in the process sort of mucks up what you've already done but you can't skip stages so I'm not getting very far.
I'm just wondering if I can open up the .icc file and take out the data relating to the step I want to skip.
I'll experiment and find out.