New PC. What to do now?

It's not just about SPEED with your Internet connection. You need to check to see what kind of "latency" you have over the transfer hops of the Internet.

Simply do a "trace-route" by bringing up your DOS prompt. Type in:

tracert (space) and then the IP address of where you connect to for your trading/quote server.

You will see a series of lines with numbers and milliseconds reported on them. The first 4 lines and "hops" are meaningless. But after that is the key.

Check to see what numbers you get.
By and large, anything over 100ms is a problem.

The bummer part, is that there is really nothing you can do about any numbers that come up high. Your internet connection company ( say Comcast ) has no control over these "hops" along the Internet Superhighway.

If there is congestion on some AT&T lines in the midwest, there's really nothing you can do about it. Hopefully, their network systems will automatically "sense" the congestion and re-route traffic.

 

final question...haha

i have my linksys router set up. do i still need to have the windows firewall turned on, or is the router firewall all i need?

 

turn it on, you can always turn it off.

 

thanks

 

Better still look up Online Armor

Their free firewall will look for "bad" behaviour on internal programs that windows fw misses entirely. Then you can turn windows fw off

 

DO NOT PUT NORTON on any pc unless it is for the ex wife or for your bro in law. NORTON is a pain in the ass............a lot of nothing to make you THINK you are doing the right thing. WASTE OF MONEY. Worst software you can put in a box.

 

You got a new PC and no pre-installed software? How come? Was it a branded one or an assembled one? What were the specifications? What all have you exactly done? It shall help someone, like the following:

 

If you get a computer with preinstalled software, you can always do a fresh install of the OS and be rid of the fluff... only takes about 15 minutes.

 

This thread is interesting and gives a lot of information. Honestly never realized that buying a new PC is so much a headache! If I were to buy a PC for Trading, what should be the hardware and the software specifications?

 

i guess, that would depend in your trading style..old pentium 3,with half gig memory, works just fine for me. even for day trading..