Your competition will be Dell. Seriously. Look at what support you CAN get from them. 4 hours preempive replacement. I can see a market for a computer system that is not optimized on price (as most end user systems are) but on - hm - "availability". * Standardize your setups as much as possible, so you can stock up on reserve systems. * Including the not exactly no dollar but alos not exactly expensive features needed to keep uptime in case of a failure. I mostly talk of.... hot swappable disc frames. * Dont rip people out on price for the hardware, but offer a good support service. NAturally you are limited (compared to Dell) for customers futher away. There should be a market. I personally would still build myself, and I have 2 computers in reserve But then..... Many traders do not know IT, and they will be willing to pay a premium for a "responsible" setup. Much more than in other businesses money and income in Trading depends on a working infrastructure.
Just buy a Macintosh Pro workstation and you are good to go. That is what we use. 5 workstations all Mac pro systems. Damn things are reliable.
Didn't know there was such a thing as a Mac Workstation. What does one cost as configured for trading?
I got mine a couple month ago and am quite happy with it (it is my first Mac product other than an iPhone) and decided to try a Mac Pro because of the prompt service and good design (you call and get to talk with someone right away who can answer your questions). I went with 2 of the 2.26 quad core xeon, 8gb ram, 2 650gb drives, and 2 of the basic NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video cards. You can configure here: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB535LL/A?mco=NDE4NDIyMQ
They aren't cheap - that's for sure! I had at least 10 Dell computers (precision, inspiron, etc) over the years and they have been built OK, but I have never had a single good experience with their service. I finally got tired of dicking around with them so I gave Apple a try. Plus the thing is a work of art in itself - open up the case and you don't see any wires! I run Windows XP with VMWare Fusion and it runs more stable than it did on the Dell Precision I just replaced.
Old one - a 650 with dual Xeon and 4gb ram. At the time it was almost the same price as this Mac Pro. BTW, are you gnome?
650 was just one generation back. Had a 975x chipset. New "T" line has x38 or x58 chipset. What's a gnome?
Sorry - he's just an old member and hardware expert that stopped posting the same time you registered. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=11828