jpg compression quality in windows 7 poorer than xp

Well that's great! I take it you've had the same problem and solved it the way you describe. I'll check into it tonight. Thanks a lot.

Just wanted to drop a line saying "thank you all" for helping me solve this problem. Yes, the problem is now solved, and as you said the cause of the problem was the ICC profile that my monitor was using (must have come with the Windows installation - I haven't done any calibration myself).

As you can see from the attached images, the picture now looks the same in both paint and windows default picture viewer, as well as Lightroom itself. The picture however is now displayed somewhat brighter, but that's not an issue as it is now displayed consistently.

/Alex