If you've never lost data due to hardware failure you haven't gone wrong so far. But IMHO if your system does not have sufficient redundancy you are playing uphill against the odds. Understanding these risks is pretty fundamental to alot of endeavors, no? To Thomas' point. This is not a financial question of 6 bucks, 600 bucks or 600,000 bucks. Its simply a matter of thoughtful design
Understood and I have nothing to add. I am no IT expert and there are entire economies built to serve end-users like me.
Agreed, and if your pulling down 7 figures a year - you can afford any level of expertise you choose. Which is the way things ought to work
If I was making seven figures I wouldnt even bother thinking about this rubbish. I would hire a young tech savvy assistant to think this out because my mental energy wouldnt be worth it to put forward on raid drives or whatever. For the rest of us who are not pulling it down we buy secondhand off of ebay and from the dell outlet arguing the configurations on websites.
Even if money is no object, it's easy to save $$$ on good computer equipment... money saved to be donated to animal shelter, girls at the strip club... any worthwhile cause.
I piss money on audio gear, but not typically on computer hardware. OS X is stable and relatively virus-free. I have local clients that come by to use the bloomberg, which actually begets clients. Some are in the tech industry and politics and I got my biggest POA client as the result of an OS X discussion in a bloomberg chat. I also run bbg on my single Win machine used solely for that purpose. Don't underestimate the aesthetic.
I would run OSX in a heartbeat... we even evaluated it as a trading floor platform... but the #1 issue is... lack of software support for trading apps.. we had to bottle things or run parellels/vmware in top of it, at which point in time, what is the point of it? CQGIC doesnt run on it natively, so I am SOL ... I have macbooks collecting dust because I cant use them for jack... actually, the kids use them instead... they are great for kids... amazig the stuff my youngest can do with it already considering he cant even speak clearly, but sure can type already... anyhow, I digress now...
My son loves to play TF2 on it. My 9yo has friends that beg to see it played on the 12-core and 30" display. Ironically it's taxed far more by that than anything I do to it. There are times that I'd like to run a version of excel that isn't gimped, but can't bring myself to dual-boot.