thank you sir! What exactly do you mean by a "dedicated trading box"? Is it just to place orders on a brokerage website? The need for me to upgrade my current laptop is because it can't handle 10+charts at once. So if by dedicated trading box consists of running multiple charts and placing orders...I don't know if that will be a go.
Another reason that I dumped thinkDesktop was that ThinkonDemand was not good enough . I reported two bugs to TDAmeritrade two years ago. As of December 2013, they were still there. However, nothing is perfect. Sierra Chart is well known to be fast, and has advanced replay functionality. But their graphics, eg. arrows , trendlines, channels, etc., are very ugly compared to those from thinkDesktop.
You can just get a video card adapter and you should be good. Won't matter what computer you have. Just make sure you have enough RAM.
Most traders want to protect their trading account. If you only have $1,000 in there and it's just a hobby, then maybe you don't need a dedicated machine. If you have $500,000 in there and you're heavy into futures on volatile days and it's what you rely on for income, it's worth protecting. By having a dedicated machine you do several things: Less chances of virus & malware letting someone get to your account. Less chance of the above causing problems that could get you stuck in trades which you need to get out of. Who cares if your gaming machine locks up as long as you can still access your positions. If it only does one thing, it has much less chance of things going wrong. Doing all those other things just adds more potential for problem. To have a dedicated $2,000 machine to earn $200,000 per year is very worthwhile for professional traders. And it's even worthwhile to have a 2nd machine with a redundant data connection in case something happens to the first one. Assess your own risk appetite and make your own decision. If you're a light trader, it sounds like you just want a new computer and one of the things it will do is light trading. On that note, just go buy whatever makes you happy. I still stick by Dell Small Business. Good luck.
I've been messing around a bunch lately on Dell Outlet and the Optiplex 7010 Small-Form-Factor will run native 3x monitors on the motherboard without the need for an add-in card. They are right around or just below your budget, come with a 3-year warranty and OS pre-loaded.
Well said great points. I personally use my laptop (Mac) as my mess around computer doing whatever I want on it without worrying. I purchased a low/medium budget computer for trading and do basically nothing else on it. I have also purchased a high quality UPS to run my computer/modem/router on. I am in the process of planning on somehow being able to use a wireless 4G connection or something similar in the case of internet loss.
I agree also. It all depends on if you are a full time trader or not. Also are you a swing trader or a day trader.