IB Forcing Upgrade to new TWS 851

[kiwi_trader]

IB's latest communication:

"TWS Upgrade

We have recently implemented new re-connect logic into our trading system that smoothly switches your connection between ISP providers in the case of an ISP failure. In addition, the new logic will keep track of orders in the TWS that a user tries to submit, modify, or cancel while a connection is down and resubmit these orders when the connection is re-established (the storing of orders will not work if you exit your TWS session).

This new re-connect logic will only work with an upgrade to TWS build 851 or higher. Since we believe this new re-connect logic is extremely beneficial to all our customers, we are requiring all customers who use the downloadable version of TWS to upgrade their TWS by Monday, October 10, 2005. As of that date, old builds of TWS will no longer work. To check your build, log into the TWS and choose Help/About Trader Workstation."


Now, its great that these problems will be reduced by 851 but what about the problems with 851 that we are already aware of or will become aware of over the next few weeks?

Forcing an upgrade in 1 month seems pretty exciting given the prior issues with new software documented on this board. What do others think?

 

[Choad]

Uh oh...

I've been using 842 and I never have problems.

Hope they wring most of the bugs out b 4 I'm forced to switch.

 

[just21]

I upgraded this week and have noticed a few disconnects, seems much less stable than previous versions. Good news is that your log files are not 30gb.

 

[Lucrum]

The price alarms don't don't always work on the newest version. I sent tech support an email.

Other than that it seems to work pretty well.

 

[IBsoft]

Quote from Choad:

Uh oh...

I've been using 842 and I never have problems.

Hope they wring most of the bugs out b 4 I'm forced to switch.

Should it be the case that there is a significant problem with 851, we will fix it before we will de-support the earlier versions.

As to the existence of this silly poll: what we are trying to avoid is the situation we had some 2-3 weeks ago. Namely, our ISP went down and we automatically switched to the backup. For some of our customers this switch-over was not seamless; they had to restart their TWS before their market data started flowing. We believe it is in everyone's benefit to upgrade, simply because the new version handles the reconnects better (regardless of whether the reason for the reconnect is noisy internet, your ISP or ours).

 

[kiwi_trader]

The poll is hardly silly ... not as silly as an "everyone must change in one month" strategy anyway. Plus, your winning - no one cares, they're just chilling out for the weekend.

The poll is a good way to create some feedback for you about the "everyone must change in one month" approach and how it reflects on a customer service ethic that I have been known to defend. Why must everyone change in one month?

And why not include some transaction information in the backfill while we are all upgrading?

I will be very happy to switch in one month if IB has worked all the significant bugs out.

 

[Remiraz]

Maybe IB should just put a out a very big announcement strongly advising everyone to upgrade to avoid that ISP problem instead of blatantly forcing it upon everyone.

Forcing customers to do stuff has never been a good business decision, especially when the new stuff is bug/trouble ridden. Its like saying : "we know our new stuff is f**ked up but hey, you MUST use it anyway!!".

I'm often amazed by the funky calls owners of million dollar companies make.

With all said and done I still consider IB to be one of the best brokerage out there in terms of "service". (not customer service hehehe but tools/features given like API, data, platform, comms etc)

 

[GTC]

IBsoft,

Is there any list of known bugs anywhere for the users to see? It will help the users not to run into the same bugs that IB is already aware of.

 

[stock777]

I'm not passing judgement on whether the new version is bug free or not, but the hystrionics about upgrading are quite amusing.

Look , sometimes the programmers figure out a better way to do things. They cannot support the old stinky way and the better way forever just because of the phobic nature of some end users.

Now, it's always possible that the new version will do something so heinous that you'll wish you were still using the old dos like version from 5 years ago.

On the other hand, the improvements may be well worth the marginal hassle that may be caused.

 

[Catoosa]

I just finished doing the upgrade. It was a disaster. All of my settings, pages, and symbols were wiped clean. Nothing left as if it was my first installation. I was upgrading from version 831.4. :eek: