Originally posted by theShadow
"Don't be swayed by "bells and whistles" some "brand new" firms may have expensive new equipment (paid for by other peoples money), whereas the firms who have been in business a long time, have stable, quality equipment that is being updated when necessary."
new equipment is better than old equipment(provided it works equally)
"updated when necessary" = we'll upgrade when it no longer works.
No kidding. What could possibly be more important than having the best equipment. The hardware and the software you are using doesn't need to just "get the job done", it needs to at the very least keep pace with what the best traders are using.
I'm not talking flat pannel monitors vs. the regular fat dat stuff either, I'm talking about the stuff that matters, RAM, Hard drives, processing power, etc.
Some of these firms have some really old setups from what I have heard. If your at a firm and the computer they give you has less than say 256K of ram I think you have to ask yourself are they looking out for your interetest. We have all seen the price of ram lately.
I traded at one place a year or so ago and when my computer started to bog down, they suggested I close some applications, that I had to many charts open.
TOO MANY....I had 4! Amount of ram in the box.....I kid you not, 128. The MINIUM required to operate XP alone.
That think took about 3 minutes to reboot too. The difference between a 1 minute boot and 3 minute boot if your computer locks up at the wrong time.
Lot of $$$ if you ask me....and it will happen.....you trade a few years, you'll lock up intraday sooner or later.
Sad that some firms focus on only providing adequate equipment. Were not secretaries doing word processing here folks.
