I have a dell 220 workstation that I got reconditioned. Unfortunately it only had 128 megs of rambus memory. It works fine, but the new release of RT seems to be bogging it down at times. Before I change brokers, I thought I should at least increase the RAM to something respectable and give it a shot. On the other hand, rambus memory is damn expensive, and this pc is nearly 3 years old. I'm wondering if I would be better off just getting a new one. Now I'm really wishing I bought two of the 4550's when dell had that incredible deal back in april. What do the experts out there say?
I'm not a computer expert but there's nothing like having a new pc over the old. Especially 3 years old is slow. I use a Dell but now i get computers built with name brand parts . It's cheaper and definitely better in my opinion.
one thing i never understood is why some traders will talk about getting the best data feeds, best direct access software and best internet connections, but trade with a $400.00 p.o.s computer? as far as i'm concerned everything starts and ends with how fast your computer is. when you send and order in it has to go from you computer to you internet connection, wouldn't you want that to be as fast as everything else, when you are looking a charts and data, i all has to be received from you internet connection to your computer, wouldn't you want that to be just as fast as everything else? get a new computer, especially now, they are cheap, you can get a brand new dell 8300 for about 1500.00
have really firmed-up since July, and my purchase of a refurbished 8300 Dimension desktop with a P4 at 2.60 and a full gig of RAM. Since memory doesn't cost all that much right now, I would see how many slots you have in your current motherboard, and add the correct speed and size of memory. Either go 128, 128, 128, 128 if you have four slots. Or go 256, 256 . . . to get up to some decent power. I had a 3 year old Dell Dimension P3 at 750Mghz and it performed pretty damn well with 512 mb of memory.
If your OS is WIN 98 then buy a new machine. WIN 98 has issues recognizing additional memory. I added an additional 256RAM to a two year old DELL and it did not help performance at all. Very happy with my brand new DELL 8300.
My cable is above T1 speed most of the time, the fills are lightning fast. The memory is sufficient, but having problems with java, and java charts, so after a number of calls to broker tech support the problem seems to be WIN 98. Ordered a new machine from IBM mostly because of WIN 98
Get a minimum of PIII, 750, 512 ram on Win2K or XP, and a data & trade execution platform that matches your trading. All else matters little.
Well that would be ideal, but that would cost over $300. For that I would spend the extra and get a new pc. Since it is ok most of the time now, I think doubling the momory would be plenty adequate. I called the people at www.buymemory.com, which was rec'd on another thread, and they are amazingly helpful. Turns out there are some wrinkles on adding to this memory and they had to do some research. They claim to be one of the few vendors selling rambus add-on memory.
Whenever someone wants to lose some weight, they go out and buy an expensive new exercise machine. When they want to improve their golf game they buy an expensive set of clubs. People always think that if they buy some expensive equipment that it will automatically help them with their endeavours. In most cases though to succeed at something it simply boils down to some plain and simple hard work that is directly applicable towards your goal. I assume that you're already a profitible trader and you're just considering some additions to the tools you work with. I wish I was in that position.....However this afternoon I went to the computer store to buy another 512 megs of ram for that too slow computer which was a lot more fun and easier than sorting through piles of data to test my latest trading method.