[wasp]

Afternoon/mornin'/evenin' all, (wherever you may be!)!

I am after a dedicated laptop for trading to support, metatrader, currenex, hotspot and a couple of stand alone broker platforms. NOTHING else; there will be not one music file, nor a picture or anything else.

It will be directly wired to the internet at home but I do need to move about so occasionally I will be on wi-fi and occasionally using a wireless card so the internet connection won't always be great, but no reason to not get the best machine still.

I was thinking a gaming machine would be best but tbh, tech is not my strong point so could be far from the ideal.

It would also be ideally lightweight and all in black! Oh, and a built in webcam plus XP and not vista.

I usually buy from these guys but any advice appreciated.

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/

Cheers

[Eiger]

I have used a Dell Inspiron notebook for the past year. It has built in wi-fi and it has worked exceptionally well. I don't use it for gaming, though it would probably handle the graphics. No worries with charting software (MetaStock, e-Signal, tradestation), and never a problem with the internet connection via wireless. It is very fast, and quite lightweight. A nice feature is that you can get a pretty good battery that lasts 5+ hours. It is light weight and has never needed service. Now, I think you can get pretty much any color your want. I would (and will) buy another one.
Eiger

[wasp]

An interesting site......

Chunky laptops though, hardly call them laptops!

http://www.tradingcomputers.co.uk/index.html

[Trader333]

I know people who repair laptops for a living and service around 4000 a week. So when I was looking around I asked which were the more reliable and they said either Toshiba or Sony. Toshiba is what I have and is cheaper than Sony but the only issue you may have is getting one with XP instead of Vista. I wanted the same so I went out and got one just before you no longer had the choice. I have found it to be great and it is unlikely that you will need one that is spec'd up for gaming. Mine is basic and as long as you keep up the maintenance on it such as defrag, etc you should be fine.



Paul

[wasp]

http://computers2.toshiba.co.uk/tosh...&charset=utf-8

handy little tool from Toshiba

[brownsfan019]

My main trading computer (where entries are placed on) is actually desktop 'replacement' aka big laptop. It's a compaq and has done very well. At the time I just got whatever the best stuff was and it's held it's own just fine.

Most important thing I found was getting a great graphics card as some trading app's can really use them. I have a laptop that I just play around on and the graphics card is not that great so when I pull up a lot of things, it can slow down even w/ 2 gig of ram in it.

[firewalker]

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

My main trading computer (where entries are placed on) is actually desktop 'replacement' aka big laptop. It's a compaq and has done very well. At the time I just got whatever the best stuff was and it's held it's own just fine.

Most important thing I found was getting a great graphics card as some trading app's can really use them. I have a laptop that I just play around on and the graphics card is not that great so when I pull up a lot of things, it can slow down even w/ 2 gig of ram in it.

Most people mistakenly attribute slow speed to the graphics card. But in today's computers (and even in laptop models) the usual bottleneck is the hard disk drive. Make you sure get yourself one with 7200RPM and preferably 16Mb buffer SATA-2. For desktops 32Mb buffer is freely available and if you look around a bit you'll find 10000RPM as well which makes a big difference. Not that common amongst laptops though.

I would be surprised if you have a laptop that's less than 3 years old that you the GPU is the problem. Unless you have one of those models that use shared memory ofcourse,... Vendors often want to push you towards this or that model with 512Mb memory on the graphics card. But, unless you are planning to play games in 1280x1024 or higher, most of this memory will remain unused and will just cost you more money.

Most trading software (charts) and classic office applications hardly require any 'graphic' processing skills. It's plain 2D, Check out the minimum requirements of IB's Trader Workstation. Even a 10-year old computer would still suffice.

If you run Vista, it's a different thing though. All the shiny details, the (typical for Web 2.0) glass floor effects, and the transparent windows will put a significant higher load on your graphics card. Even if I had the most powerful laptop around, I'd still prefer XP because I don't need all that stuff and will usually turn even in XP all the templates/colours off and switch basic to a very slim and basic 2000-look.

[GammaJammer]

Careful with the ecn connections - they're pretty bandwidth hungry (at least for the wholesale side of things - may be less for you as I have no idea what / how many prices you'll be getting down the pipe). But I for one would struggle to get them to perform over WiFi I reckon.