By "Market", I presume you mean the "helping noobs with computers" market? That's fine. There isn't much in it anyway. I started this thread because a guy sent me an email telling me of what he wanted his system to do and listed the components of the rig he'd ordered. And he wanted to know what I thought of his order. Long story short, the rig was a hose and the markup was waayyy excessively overpriced. So, I tried to help save him some money, but each step along the way, he'd contact the guy who'd sold him the other rig. Then he'd get back with me an tell me what he said, etc. Even got to the point where he wanted me to have a 3-way conversation with the salesman guy. (He even talked with ANOTHER salesman from another company and brought what "he" said into the discussion. Sheesh.) Well.. because of this it was all very aggravating and took far too long. I eventually convinced him that it was I who was giving him the straight scoop and not the other guys. I guess I could have dropped it early on and left him to his own choices, but he is a friend of a friend of mine so I wanted to follow through. When it was finally done... he STILL didn't do quite what I said he should have, and it cost him an additonal $400. Still he saved nearly $2,000 over the original rig. Then I thought... If he'd paid me a modest consulting fee, I'd have not only beer money, but I wouldn't have had to fight him tooth and nail to do the right thing. He would have just taken my recommendations "because he paid me tell him the strait scoop"... that's a better way to do things... People are funny. They are much more likely to take advice when it costs rather than when it's free... Just another example of "no good deed goes unpunished"..
gnome, you have opened a good thread with good intentions and please do not be discouraged with people around you. Three Cheers! Just as one can give an overview of whjat is required for gaming software (like high resolution graphics etc.), is it possible to give a general overview of what is required for trading softwares? If so, please explain, thanks.
Unless you have special needs from your software (like perhaps custom indicators or certain Java apps), most trading apps run almost entirely from RAM. Therefore, a fast CPU doesn't make much difference except at boot, shutdown, loading apps... etc. One everything is loaded, the CPU is mostly idle and waiting for something to do. So, any modern C2D CPU or better, on a rig with adequate RAM (2G likely enough for XP), running on WinXP or x64 is probably all that matters. The rest is just bells and whistles. High powered video cards not required.
Many trading software currently on the market hog a lot of power, and you definitely want overkill in that department (especially in a fast market) so I'd go with 4G just to be safe.
Anyone can tell how much memory is used at peak just by checking their Task Manager. I've never been able to use even 1GB of memory even when I intentionally piled everything I could on at one time... However, the "4G decision" isn't what it used to be... RAM is cheap now.
I am stupid when it comes to the in and out's of a computer system. I wish I had help when I first started trading almost 10 years ago. Gnome, you are right. I pay my friend to handle my system. Much easier and I don't feel as bad, when I ask him to come over and help me out. What's weird is I can hack into a computer but never took the time to build a computer. LOL. Fat Tire sounds good right now!