Hummm... i guess i better put in my 2 cents to BigEds comments..
>>1. Charts - Trend lines are too simplistic. No way to change the colors or size of the lines - necessary for S/R monitoring. Also, can't find a way to change the background colors on the chart. Can't overlay the analytics on the chart where the price is being displayed. I didn't see Bollinger bands, but suspect all the pieces are there to build by hand. Sizing/Ranging of charts crude.
Trendlines cant adjust, can change background color by right mouse clicking on chart, bollinger bands??? i see them, maybe the lines are the same color as your background... dunno... sizing... i must admitted they suck... analytic values... click on the info button..
>>2. L2 (Market Maker) panel seems to lack color coding of the time/sales - (bid/ask/between/hod/lod). Since it is after-market, I can't tell about how it works during the market
hummm again.. i have no probs... i can see above and below the best bid/ask (color wise), best bid as a different color, custom tier color levels, times and sales??? again, user color configurable (EXCEPT on the level window). I prefer to use the T/S window in addition to the lvlII T/S. The ticker version of the T/S is very powerful, and configurable... wanna see big blocks only?? GSCO/MSCO trade activity... bah blah blah...
>>3. No portfolio feature (allowing entry of long/short overnight positions, showing cost, size, market value, commissions, date the trade was entered, etc.)
again..... click on File/NEW/Portfolio window...
BAMM!! enter your symbol,shares, date of trade, commission, hit enter... current value, gain(points), $gain, %gain, time and date of trade...
>>4. No pre-configured anything.
i have a shi* load by clicking on Layout...
>>5. Linking of panels is crude or not possible.
false again... i have my quote screen auto linked to lvlII, T/S, 1min,3min graphs, 5day chart, and more.. just by clickin on the symbol(s) i have on my quote window i can flip between stocks...
>>6. Overall - no way to determine if the application is waiting on data or what the data rate is to the application from the servers or what the servers addresses are - so that you may further monitor the data rate. Essential if the application is designed to wait hard for the requested data - if the data never comes or is delayed, the PC hangs. I should note that I had to ctrl-alt-del the application as it was waiting on data and essentially froze my pc until it received the data it was waiting on, which never came of at least was over 180 seconds.
hummm.... datarate is more dependent on your line feed... i gots a standard cable box, running a laptop for chatroom, celeron 300mzh runing quotetracker,email, and general web browsing, main esignal box - 400mhz celeron running a proxy server,esignal,omnitrader, sometimes tradestation, with 3 display monitors, cybercorps frontend all on 96Megs of RAM without a hangup even when the feed is inactive... with all this load, i have yet to crash... (knocking on wooden table now )...
NOW for My pet peeve with esignal....
1. PRICE!!!!!
2. could use more analytics...
3. PRICE!!!!!
why do i stay with them????
Alot of the major software packages support esignals feed, and if you have access to evaluate many of them, not having to juggle between vendors saves time and trouble...
But!!! only you can decide what works for you....
Happy trading
