  Starting from a mean-field description for a dispersion of highly charged
spherical or (parallel) rod-like colloids, we introduce the simplification of a
homogeneous background to include the contribution of other polyions to the
static field created by a tagged polyion. The charge of this background is
self-consistently renormalized to coincide with the polyion effective charge,
the latter quantity thereby exhibiting a non-trivial density dependence, which
directly enters into the equation of state through a simple analytical
expression. The good agreement observed between the pressure calculated using
the renormalized jellium and Monte Carlo simulations confirms the relevance of
the {renormalized} jellium model for theoretical and experimental purposes and
provides an alternative to the Poisson-Boltzmann cell model since it is free of
some of the intrinsic limitations of this approach.
