I know everyone has their own thoughts about computer companies... and this is just one persons thoughts.... Mine... So, before anyone beats me up - again... Just my thoughts as a EXTERMELY HAPPY CUSTOMER. I sent the below to NTI about my QuadStation â I thought I would share with ET - We have all think about how great a new system will work when we first get it. But how many of us think about this when everything goes wrong. If any of you wonder about "TECH SUPPORT" being a Major consideration in buying a new system, Let me relay what happened to me. My system got a virus from the antivirus program provided by the DSL service I have, going down(I know, lesson learned.), I called the DSL tech support,and after around 2 hours of trying to understand what the tech from India was saying and after 2 hours of them trying to get the virus removed by remote access they told me they couldn't do any more for me, Telling me sorry, but you are on your own. And to make bad matters worse they had corrupted the OS untill I couldn't even get online, let alone trade.So in a last ditch effort to get the system back online I called NTI. I told them what was happening,and they told me to install the FRD (backup drive),(which I forgot about)They walked me through it and around 10 mins later was back on line . Not stopping there, they even helped me move & save the user settings of my trading platform from the corrupt drive to the FRD after it was up, saving me around 5 hours of work & headaches in 5 mins of remote access.They also set up Norton antivirus which was already installed on the FRD. All this after having the system for 1 year and on top of all that, I sent the old drive to them 3 days ago to be cleaned and have already received an e-mail from UPS that it's already being shipped back.As traders we put time into researching the trades were going to make, I'm glad I did research into which company would build the system I am using. This is why I can say without any reservation that I'm on the winning side of this trade. Many thanks & kudos to the Great team at NTI, Thanks for everything, Paul
You should have a "system backup" routine which would let you be back up and running within 10 minutes regardless of any virus, malware, or hard drive failure.
Most of those things just back up data.... which won't help you much with a system or hard drive failure.
If you have a new computer, then you have an old computer. My advice is to keep the old computer set up for trading but turned off and disconnected. If you get a crash/ problem/ virus/ whatever on the new one, unplug it and fire up the old one. Had you been in big positions in a volatile market it could have meant death not having your box up and running. How much redundancy you have is necessitated by how heavy of a trader you are.
All good points. The FRD drive (which I forgot about) is appartenly for that reason - although that works for a virus or hard drive or software problem, but not another computer problem like a power supply as they said, so a second system is a great idea. Guess I will go out to Best Buy and get a cheap disposable computer as a backup. Another thing I learned - if you cant pernounce the tech support persons name - move on right away....
If you're at all computer savvy, suggest getting one off of Craigslist (Windows Device Manager will give you a quick summary if all is working OK) ... they often go for cheap. And any new, "cheap" computer you get at BB will be REALLY el-cheapo + cost too much.
They have already outsmarted you. Many told their indian tech support workers to pick an "American/English" name. Like John, David, Susan... doesn't matter. Hewlett Packard sends a lot of their tech support calls to India. Especially if you call late at night, US times. They are typically extremely courteous... but they don't usually understand my problem the first round.