Quote from mgookin:
Some things I'm reading about in this thread and sharing my experience:
Win XP x64 is very nice. I ran it for quite a while on a homemade quad core DDR3 trading box and it ran great.
But why aren't people using dedicated trading boxes? I read of someone having a lockup while running Ninja, ..., streaming music, browser, etc. I run trading and nothing but trading on one dedicated machine. This way trading (most important computing function) has dedicated kick ass system 100% resources dedicated. Then I use junk boxes (like old Dell Dimension) for internet, mail, etc.
Suggest building dedicated box and doing a Chris Rock on it "Turn that shit off." Remove and/ or turn off/ disable everything not related to trading. Not only in add/ remove but also in add/ remove Windows Compoents. On my trading rig you can't even read a pdf because there is no reader and there won't be one. No flash, no trash. Nothing/ nadda if it ain't used for trading.
I'm using a server OS on my trading box. A server OS by default has everything turned off. It does only what you allow it to do in lieu of doing everything you tell it not to do like with XP or otherwise.
Are you really going to be editing movies while trading? If so, do it on a different box.
As to Win7 I can't see being a MS guinea pig. If they have finally produced a good OS, that will be made very public. And if it's another junk OS, that too will come out in due time. WinXP is fine for trading. Best place to buy WinXP Pro x64 is newegg for around $135.
BTW: Win XP Pro (as most x64 OS's) has a 32 bit (x86) Program Files folder. YOu can run most any application on it. And pretty much everyone has drivers for it now too.