It seems to me eventually all the mergers are going to result in scalpers having to worry less and less about hotkeys as things progress. At least that is what I hope. However I could be wrong now most ecn's have reserve functions, the ability to hide orders, etc and there is no telling what functionality is down the road. I just really don't have time to pull down those little drop down boxes and adjust those setting manually.
"Lets see, I want my share size to be 600, and and I don't want to pay more than the offer +.03, and....."
Right now the biggest problem some scalpers have is they have a hot key for 4-5 ecn's, another for supersoes, and then a zillion other buttons to sweep bids, offers, offer out, bid out, bid out a set fraction above or below the inside bid/offer, etc, etc.
Where as on the NYSE you can focus more on the trade instead of the implementation of the trade.
All jokes aside having been a scalper who has switched platforms a few times, it is a real pain in the ass when for a year F1 key has been load island bid and shift-F1 has been Island FOC or whatever and all of a sudden something has to be slightly different and it screws up the entire layout that has been soaked into your mind over 1000's of trades.
I'm all for less hotkeys these days. I see these NYSE traders using a mouse to trade and it still blows my mind.