I am fairly new to the game and also started with Scottrade. I opened an IB account a couple months ago, and I now have about an equal capital balance b/w the two. When I don't have access to my cable connection I use Scottrade to keep in touch with quotes b/c it is quicker.
My biggest problem was the commissions, b/c I don't trade too many shares at a time - you don't have this problem. The deal breaker for me was the inability to short when I wanted.
Another issue, and I don't know if I'll experience this with IB down the road, is that Scottrade has f**ed me on a couple trades. Basically, one time I had an open buy stop order which was filled but not posted, so I didn't know it had been filled. As a result the stock fell below where I had planned to place a stop. I had placed the same type of stop on the same issue several times before, so I figured I had a good argument. They, of course, claimed no responsibility for posting filled orders even though it was their servers being down that caused the problem. They gave me a bunch of free trades which covered about half my excess losses. But, it was frustrating considering how they boast about customer service.
so hey, that's my 2 cents
