I work in the tech field, so I thought I would give some advice to those who decide to avoid the inevitable day when the pc dies in the middle of a trade. Some of this will be beyond the average Joe, but the more you can follow it the better off you will be. 1. Get a UPS power supply. Plug in the pc, monitor, modem, firewall and router to the UPS. Aside from lightning protection I guarantee one day your power will go out. It is only a matter of time. They start at $55.00 and will allow you to close your trade and shut down your operating system when the power goes out. 2. Build a computer or have someone close to you build a pc from name brand standardized parts. If your power supply or memory dies, you can get one quickly locally vs. sending it off to or calling Dell or a major pc maker. 3. If you can afford to build two full pc's, then do it. Leave one loaded and ready to go in case your main machine dies. 4. If you cannot afford two machines, at least get a removable hard drive bay. Load identical new drives for trading software and OS only. If one stops booting or is hit with malware, you can turn off, slide it in and reboot to a working clone drive and be trading again in minutes. This is CHEAP insurance. 5. Don't email, web browse, fileshare, mp3, instant message or ANYTHING else with your trading pc or trading drives. Do not use your family pc to trade from. Do not let anyone use your trading pc. The average person will be infected with malware many many times due to human nature. Yes, even with antivirus and firewalls it IS going to happen. 6. Only load the exact software you need on your drives. Keep your operating system, trading software, video card drivers and antivirus up to date. 7. Keep your pc off the floor. It will suck in dust and hair and dirt otherwise. This increases heat and heat kills. Every 6 months "gently" blow out the pc with compressed air. Do NOT spin the fans 6000 rpm's with compressed air, you will burn the bearings out. One month later your fans will begin to grind and die. Hold the fan blades with a pencil or a finger while cleaning them off. 8. It is ok to leave your machine running. This is and endless debate. I say if you have temperature variances in your trading room, leave it on. It stays one temperature and one humidity level inside the case and connections will not become brittle on the motherboard from the heating and cooling cycles. On the flipside if an electrical storm is coming, you can turn them off if your not using them. If you have no software memory leaks, it will not hurt anyting by letting it run. 9. Get a real hardware firewall loaded with anti malware software. Learn to use it. Sonicwall offers Total Secure. Avoid Symantec and large security suite type products for the pc itself. Try something like Eset NOD32 which is lightweight on resources on the pc itself. If you followed the above rules, you might be able to get away without antivirus at all on the pc, but get it on the firewall. That is all for now.
Amen to that but even with a Mac you still need the battery backup. My power went out once when I was good and long and boy, was I glad I had the battery backup
Excellent advice from the OP. I just moved my computer off the floor to avoid all the dirt and hair my trading computers sucks in.
Then for sure they cannot afford two computers Also - until recently... you would not find Mac parts in a pinch. Also, you can be limited on a mac as far as charting software and sometimes trading platforms. I wish the story was different, but the pc dominates the business and trading world.
I recently bought a MacBook Pro. I don't use it as my primary trading machine, but it's a damn nice machine. Evidently you can run almost any PC type software with the use of parallels or a couple of other possibilities. That said, there is a provider by the name of Linn Software that offers Investor R/T for either the Mac or PC, that operates with IB data. IB by the way offers TWS for either PC or Apple. Just a few possibilities. OldTrader