A lot of guys used to talk like that in favor of their pet old-hat OS, this during the 1995+ years when M$ used to show impressive growth numbers for its NT. They quickly had to learn how to swim, otherwise drown. vehn, old friend, it may be time to let in some fresh air and take a serious look at what's coming. nononsense
First of all let me say I'm neither for nor against any OS I just want stability, speed, and ease of use with regard to TRADING which is what I do. Having said that I'm seriously looking into LINUX as it has a better speed and stability profile compared with MS windows XP products. But and this is a big butt I hear alot about software non-compatibility and that woories me. I admit I have not used Linux but I'm afraid to go down that road when people like Mr. Medved tell me their software is not directly compatible. So I guess I the thing to do is get a box going side by side LINUX vs Windows and compare. In fact I see a business opportunity here given traders should trade not spend hours days and weeks tweaking there systems. At an institution they have IT but retail traders are sort of Michaelangelo-esque creatures having to know quite a few things. I envision a sort of a Maximum PC magazine type situation for traders and financial apps with add space from vendors. Splat, splat, splat as the tomatoes clobber me back into cyberspace......
I would seriously doubt that using Vista within the first six months would be prudent. I advise all of my clients to give new software, especially OS's, an initial growth period. Don't become a test platform for Microsoft if you can help it!
Right. Consider OpenSource. Being that it's well scrutinzed by the world communtity, and not just the people in a departmental set of cubicles.
You're right. Since MSFT is releasing 7 or so different versions, I am led to believe that the first one or two are going to be carrots for the hackers to test the parameters.
You can run both at the same time on the same machine using virtualization software. With the new dual core processors this is an increasingly viable option performance wise. Some software options: Microsoft to make their virtualization software free and also support Linux as a guest OS: http://www.theregister.com/2006/04/03/ms_virtual_free/ VmWare makes a free version available: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/03/vmware_goes_free/ Xen is free and open source and now supports Windows due to better virtualization support in new CPUs: http://www.xensource.com/ This could be used for example, to run browsers and email under Linux where the security record is considerably better than on Windows and just use Windows for Windows specific trading software. Of course a fair amount of memory would be recommended for such a setup.