First, I really love IB (however, the backend...) because they allow me to do retail what I was forced to do at a firm / local years ago.
When you count everything together, the Universal Account, their offering of many markets and the commish, they are the best overall broker -
except for the software.
I will criticize IB only when I feel it is really neccessary, but this important to me:
My plea is: Please, Please IB, stop the "Bells and Whistles".
This week I had the pleasure to upgrade to the latest TWS build.
(I am one of the guys who stick to their old & running TWS version for months)
When I first ran it - it didn't. Unlike it's predecessors it seems to need access to port 80, which I block on my firewall (for reasons).
After I enabled port 80 I found out it needs the http port to download, load + open a 9 megabyte manual .jar archive.
Nice, but I certainly will never need this thing.
Instead of running now - It crashed (TWS window just hang / didn't repaint for minutes).
Killed the process, restarted it - crashed again.
Repeat, now it came up, finally.
After trying some of the new features & bringing up some charts just to have a look at the program, I noticed the java hog slooooows down.
Please look at this excerpt of my win task manager:
Notice, the host machine is a fast Athlon64 with 3 gigs RAM.
After tampering around for 10 mins I have a CPU time of 6.5 mins.
Opening a new window in TWS often hangs the program
for 10-20 secs.
I think more of this stuff is not bearable.
My conclusion is, while IB seems to have really good programmers for the backend, they _have_ to change their development policy for the frontend.
Please re-focus on your active customers. Did they need an integrated manual or Google RSS feed in the past years ? I guess, NO...
The only guys needing this sort of features are prolly those buying 85 shs of CSCO, later yelling at the customer service because their trail-o-stop triggered 15 seconds late costing them serious money
Not to be misunderstood - I love it when IB adds useful features,
like the vola-market scanner, the option trader or interesting new API functions.
When you count everything together, the Universal Account, their offering of many markets and the commish, they are the best overall broker -
except for the software.
I will criticize IB only when I feel it is really neccessary, but this important to me:
My plea is: Please, Please IB, stop the "Bells and Whistles".
This week I had the pleasure to upgrade to the latest TWS build.
(I am one of the guys who stick to their old & running TWS version for months)
When I first ran it - it didn't. Unlike it's predecessors it seems to need access to port 80, which I block on my firewall (for reasons).
After I enabled port 80 I found out it needs the http port to download, load + open a 9 megabyte manual .jar archive.
Nice, but I certainly will never need this thing.
Instead of running now - It crashed (TWS window just hang / didn't repaint for minutes).
Killed the process, restarted it - crashed again.
Repeat, now it came up, finally.
After trying some of the new features & bringing up some charts just to have a look at the program, I noticed the java hog slooooows down.
Please look at this excerpt of my win task manager:
Notice, the host machine is a fast Athlon64 with 3 gigs RAM.
After tampering around for 10 mins I have a CPU time of 6.5 mins.
Opening a new window in TWS often hangs the program
for 10-20 secs.
I think more of this stuff is not bearable.
My conclusion is, while IB seems to have really good programmers for the backend, they _have_ to change their development policy for the frontend.
Please re-focus on your active customers. Did they need an integrated manual or Google RSS feed in the past years ? I guess, NO...
The only guys needing this sort of features are prolly those buying 85 shs of CSCO, later yelling at the customer service because their trail-o-stop triggered 15 seconds late costing them serious money
Not to be misunderstood - I love it when IB adds useful features,
like the vola-market scanner, the option trader or interesting new API functions.
They do have the right to refuse to do business with anyone they choose...