For someone that is fairly inept (and lazy) at putting together systems beyond plugging in the VGA/DVI cords, what is a good route to pick up a system that will work efficiently as well as be exceptionally kind to the eyes? If it helps in the advice, I run 36 Esignal charts of different time frames(only volume and SMA for indicators) as well as 3 Esig linked excel spreads for an aggregate data feed for about 350 symbols. I will also have Bloomberg and Briefing for news as well as IB's Trader Workstation running. I currently run two laptops (one Macbook Pro and one HP, both 4 GB RAM) connected to one external 22" monitor each but I need a total of 6 screens and the computer to run them as the laptops are over 2 years old and having some issues. I am primarily concerned about the computer as one of my buddies had dropped $7k on his custom trading computer a couple of years back and the thing was slower than his cheap laptop, for whoever knows what reason. I have been looking at naplestech.com and digitaltigers.com but am open to truck on up to Best Buy and pick up the computer there with a special graphics card or two, and maybe piecemeal it together getting the mulit-monitor mounts and monitors elsewhere, if need be. Any thoughts on this or experience with either Naplestech or DigitalTigers are greatly appreciated
I recently bought a dual quad core Mac Pro (running W7 via BootCamp) and could not be happier. It blows away anything I've ever owned or used.
Yeah, I have been stoked about my Macbook Pro running the XP OS BUT it needs the extra monitor. I had thought of picking up one of the Maxtrox multi-monitor adapters but not sure how well such work or if my viddie card is sufficient. Also, whilst it has been running well enough, I get the blue death screen more often than allows for peace of mind and wonder if it is slightly instable due to the splitting of the resources or it is just getting old (from Winter '07). Then again, i know much less of computers than i should considering it is the substratum of my livelihood.
Recently I had built one computer from parts myself. Intel i7 930 processor, 12GB RAM. About $1200 (not including Windows OS). On top of that add 3 PCIeX16 graphic cards to drive 6 monitors. Each card was about $50. It is not that difficult to put one together. But if you want to buy something right off the box (which is more economical usually)... I suggest that you can start with picking the processor first. (Or the grade of the processor like i7 or i5 or i3 or the AMD series) Because that is crucial to whether your computer can handle the load you expect to put on it. Then figure out how much RAM to have (probably 4GB to 6GB these days). The final but the most crucial element: how many open slots does that computer have (and what kind)? That will help you short-list the desirable makes/models. All the new boxes that I looked at (HP, Acer, Toshiba, etc.) only offer 1 or 2 open PCIeX16 slots. If you plan to buy 3 of the PCIeX16 video cards (dual monitor for each), then you would not have enough slots. Unless you buy some of those 4 in 1 or 6 in 1 video cards, which are more expensive. It's been mentioned before that a Dell T3500 would be a good trading computer. I have not used it before so I don't have any direct experience. My experience has been with HP/Compaq and I like them, except that they don't provide enough PCIeX16 slots (which is why I decided to build my own).
To the best of my knowledge, there's no "splitting of resources" under boot camp. The Mac boots to Windows; it's as if the crappy Mac OS doesn't exist. In any event, I've been beating the shit out of this box for the last eight weeks, without a hitch. FWIW, a Mac Pro will run up to eight monitors.
To run 6 monitors, selecting a retailer isn't really the issue.... it's proper mobo and video cards. If you're going the Mac route, I can't help. But PC, you should be able to get power and proper video cards for about $1100-$1200. And no, not likely at Best Buy.. unless they happen to have a gamer machine with at least 2, PCIEx16 slots.
Less is more, or in the case of this website more is less... I did an experiment, my P&L is consistanly lower with more screens, I broke even/profited with 8 screens. More than two/three screens is a waste of time and just an extenson of your pinga. surdo out
His P/L is consistently an "L", hence doubling the number of screens will double his "L". In other words I agree with you. (But you didn't know it till now.). My pinga is very grande. I do not need any protesis.