Thanks for all the help. I will check out all your suggestions. As for First Alert, I am still waiting for them to create my remote filters for me since I really can't do to much with the thin client. In the old full version, it used to take no more then ten minutes to create a filter out of an idea you had. Now it takes an unknown amount of time for them to do it for you, that is truely GREAT!!! Sarcastically speaking of course.
They must have a great management, sarcastically speaking of course. I worked as a system tester for software company and know how things go wrong when you fix one bug and this screws up another module, at First Alert they do not even know what is a system testing. They wont to switch every user to this new version I'd rather switch to something else. I hope the company will understand one day that what they are doing right now is not wise.
Today I looked at all the other software packages that have been either mentioned or suggested on this board. Only one may come close, although I have yet to truly try it(Stock Watch PRO), I need a subscription to Qcharts first. As for the others: trade-ideas, linnsoft.com, neoticker They all seem like nice programs, but none come close to what First Alert does for me. So I am still in search for good software. As for FirstAlert, they told me today they are out of space on their remote filter server so they can't at this time create any of the custom filters that I need. So at this point the program is useless to me. I will wait on them since I have no other choice at this point.
In terms of real time filtering ability those others are pretty much "mickey mouse" software programs compared to First Alert. I have tried them all.
On a positive note, since I switched to First Alert thin I don't have to worry about splits, new symbols, missing data, and other data maintenance issues. The data feed is also a LOT more reliable than their old Ideastream (?) feed or whatever it was called. On the downside, I have to create my own custom group now because their remote filters don't have all the symbols I need. There's also a few cool new features on the thin version that aren't on the standalone version, like the ability to output multiple filter results in one window. If you have a lot of filters this makes it easier to keep an eye on everything.
Neovest has currently halted adding new remote filters because of a hardware failure on a "filter generator" in their data center. The new box is scheduled to be online by the end of the week, after which new filters can be added again. To add new filters, the best guy to contact at Neovest is Andy Higham (ahigham@neovest.com). He is in charge of administering remote filters.
Since I have upgaded to the newest version I have not had any problems. I have also tried all the others (insight, stock watch pro, linnsoft,etc) and I agree that none of them come close to First Alert. ShortIgnorance, I didn't even know that there were brokers who used First Alert for order entry. What broker offers this? I would love to link my filter results to order entry (or even automate executions based on my filters if possible). That would save be valuable time.
What I find inconvenient in www.trade-ideas.com: I am looking for a stand alone application where you can not only change the search criteria but as well limit the result set produced by the search let's say to 15. On your site it keeps refreshing and you do not see what is new on the filter. It would be a benefit if I could see the charts of stocks returned by the filter window on one page. I do not know how you can trade and have 4 open browsers with different filters which hard to read. If you keep let's say market up and market down stocks on one page it is sorted kind of strange, not by group but all together mixed. You need three pairs of eyes to keep up. Felichka, I am trying to understand your post in terms of what you are saying on how we refresh and sort. When you create an alert window you can set it to be as vast or as finite as you like. You can say I want to watch the whole universe of stocks for things that are doing XYand Z or you can say I want to watch stocks between 20 and 40 that only trade 500000 shares and have a spread of less than 10 cents when the alert occurs. The optioanl filters are designed to limit your alert results. The whole point of our tool is to give you the update in real-time so it will refresh only when a valid alert occurs. If you are looking for something like 15 results it seems like a different type of product all together. Here is a product from Esignal which is completely different in nature to ours but does what I think you are looking for. http://208.240.76.230/StaticScan.htm Regarding charts and our alerts. Our alerts are linked to Yahoo finance so that when you click on a link it takes you to the intra day graph. This is designed as an example use case. We assume most of our users have some charting platform available to them so that when they see a symbol come across an alert they can pull it up on a montage level 2 and chart. I am attaching a picture of how our alerts are used with a trading platform as an FYI. Hope this helps. Dan