I find it interesting that someone likes the search in 7. I hate it. The search in XP was much better.
Dell stopped supporting the Xeon W5580 CPU in the T5500 and the T7500 - I think the difference is 45nm tech vs. 32nm tech and that the new chip is a 6-core. The X5680 CPU is bigger, better, faster - and runs cooler. The T5500/T7500 is an awesome platform for a desktop but to be honest these CPUs are overkill. I can't run the W5580's at 100% for more than an hour or so or else it'll start to overheat. The X5680 is better - I can run that for hours - but the temps get pretty hot and the fans sound like a jet engine. These CPUs would be much better off in a server environment with climate control IMHO. Still cool to have and run simulations, etc. on - but wayyyy over kill because you can't use the full capacity of the machine at normal room temperature without worrying about heat issues. Also, there are only 9 memory DIMMS and you really need more than 9GB of RAM in them so things get expensive. Especially the 6-core CPUs need 18GB RAM... IMHO of course.
My next door neighbor got a new Dell T3500 w/x5650 Xeon... says it's "very fast"... he's an architect. His T3500 is quiet and the CPU runs cool. I was surprised to see the minimal CPU heatsink, but when I checked the core temps, they were very low.
with a decent video card, aero does not hurt performance, as far as I can tell. this is negative hype from elitists. what computer 'needs' 18 gig of ram? even a frontrunning slimebag hft bandit can get away with less than that.
One thing that's weird about windows 7 is that you can't access the text editor from the programs menu. You have to search your hard drive for 'wordpad' to find it. WTF?
Anything that takes CPU cycles to support is taking the same CPU cycles from your trading programs. It may or may not affect the overall performance that much. The question is do you really need it. If nothing else, the default aero crap is very distracting. When trying to Alt-Tab to switch beween different active windows, what Win 7 does is very distracting and disorienting. I disabled all aero stuff in the first week of using Win 7. e.g. Transluscent title bar? Why? You don't gain anything. A solid color title bar is just fine for me.
Shouldn't have to. First click on the Start button. Then click on "All Programs" button. Then click on "Accessories" folder. Then click on "Wordpad" icon.