computer question -- am i being ripped off here?

--- epilogue ---

The last year has been good, so I decided to splurge.

I walked into a Mac store, bought a dual quad core Nehalem-Xeon Mac Pro. I'm running 64-bit windows7 courtesy of BootCamp. In other words, my Mac's now a PC.

So far, it's the best damn PC I've ever encountered. Windows experience score of 7.4.

I run Multicharts, which takes full advantage of the 16 virtual cores created with the xeon's hyperthreading architecture.

The Mac's built like a brick. It's so quiet, I have to look at the for the little power LED in the front of the case to know that it's on. And it's gorgeous, the brushed aluminum case a thing to behold.

As for speed...it took more than 20 minutes for that i7 to compile my EL scripts in Multicharts' PowerLanguage editor. The Mac did it under five minutes.

Overkill? Who cares.

It's my (considerably less expensive) version of an Italian sports car.

I hate Macs. But, God help me, I do love Mac-PCs.
 
Quote from tortoise:

They offered a "free upgrade" to their F-25 model. Coincidentally (or not), its specifications are essentially identical to the computer I ordered (and paid for) so I wasn't clear on how this represented an upgrade. In any event, I said, "no thanks just refund to my cc" and went to a retail store to buy another bland box, the kind that has served me so well for so long...

I do think this was, probably, an "honest mistake" -- a function of disorganization rather than dishonesty -- for the simple reason that it was so egregious I can't imagine they'd try it as a matter of policy. But, like I've said, I've done my time with "mom & pop" computer builders. From now on, it's big & impersonal for me.
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I always buy from Dell, HP or other manufacturers, especially when . I don't need a middleman to drive up the price.

I thought Christian Gross was right on. Having some redundancy and connecting together off the shelf stuff is better than complex and expensive. NASA built their own complex & expensive shuttles, and two of them have already exploded with serious loss of life, etc.. Now we have to pay the Russians to take some of our astronauts to the Space Station.

Every dollar wasted is a dollar that could have gone into trading or other useful purpose.
 
Quote from SomeYoungGuy:

I bought a kick-ass computer from a custom shop, got a lot of power for a great price.

BUT, their online ordering system let me buy too small of a power supply and I forgot to have Windows installed. The power supply blew up after the fourth time I booted it up, and I never figured out how to get Windows to install on my RAID HD's.

Yes, I accept these were both my mistakes / ignorance. My employer paid for the computer, but I paid to fix my mistakes out of pocket so my employer wouldn't know I made these mistakes. I am a professional software engineer.

It is a $2500 computer, I paid $200 of my own money to fix it and it set me back a month.

Next time I am ordering an off-the-shelf from Dell.
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if i was a professional software engineer, I wouldn't want my boss to know that I don't know how to install software either.
 
Quote from SomeYoungGuy:

I bought a kick-ass computer from a custom shop, got a lot of power for a great price.

BUT, their online ordering system let me buy too small of a power supply and I forgot to have Windows installed. The power supply blew up after the fourth time I booted it up, and I never figured out how to get Windows to install on my RAID HD's.

Yes, I accept these were both my mistakes / ignorance. My employer paid for the computer, but I paid to fix my mistakes out of pocket so my employer wouldn't know I made these mistakes. I am a professional software engineer.

It is a $2500 computer, I paid $200 of my own money to fix it and it set me back a month.

Next time I am ordering an off-the-shelf from Dell.
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dell is in the pits, and you want to buy from the loser?
birds of a feather...
 
Quote from JA_LDP:

are you being screwed over? yes.

you paid for an i7 and they gave you an i5. what about all the other components?

if the i7 was a 1366 and your new i5 is an 1156, that means a different mobo, which also means different memory which basically means a whole different (cheaper) machine all together.
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You have benchmarks to prove that? Or is this just linear thinking at its worst?

You're probably right, I expect my i5 to whither and die long before your i7 , and the mother board to break into tiny pieces at the first sign of a cpu usage spike,


WARNING: If you're getting hardware advice on ET you're in deep shit.
 
Quote from stock777:

You have benchmarks to prove that? Or is this just linear thinking at its worst?

You're probably right, I expect my i5 to whither and die long before your i7 , and the mother board to break into tiny pieces at the first sign of a cpu usage spike,


WARNING: If you're getting hardware advice on ET you're in deep shit.
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Actually, I've been a software engineer for almost 14 years now and was a hardware designer for a few years too. The advice on ET is actually not too bad, there's usually about 5 knowledgeable posters to every 1 clueless poster.

The ratio is reversed when it comes to trading advice though.
 
Quote from stock777:

You have benchmarks to prove that? Or is this just linear thinking at its worst?

You're probably right, I expect my i5 to whither and die long before your i7 , and the mother board to break into tiny pieces at the first sign of a cpu usage spike,


WARNING: If you're getting hardware advice on ET you're in deep shit.
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wow. What was I right about? i never suggested intel built i5s was any less quality than i7s.

you obviously have no clue of the differences between lga 1366 and lga 1156. why don't you call up your local geek squad and ask them.
 
Quote from christianhgross:

Step 1: Get Input Director http://www.inputdirector.com/

Step 2: Buy cheap, but powerful hardware.

Step 3: Invest in a decent set of LCD screens.

Using this approach you can easily slipstream a notebook so that you are productive while on the go. Or if you have to replace a machine you are up and running within a couple of hours.
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Wow, an intelligent post. What are you doing on E'trader?
 
Quote from JA_LDP:

wow. What was I right about? i never suggested intel built i5s was any less quality than i7s.

you obviously have no clue of the differences between lga 1366 and lga 1156. why don't you call up your local geek squad and ask them.
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I have more than a clue, gotten when I did my due diligence before building my i5 rig. (Built my own since the 80's) My research indicated that other than spending $300 more for the computer, you'd be getting next to nothing in a performance boost.

I took your 'cheaper' comment literally, if that's not what you meant, so be it.

For anything but the most insane co located hft bullshit, I defy you to show me a practical difference in performance for a trader.


PS Buying a pre built computer is nearly guaranteed to be underpowered and overpriced. Especially from so called 'specialty' shops catering to a niche.
 
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