TRADING PC's

I’m currently looking at various options for a new PC in the near future. As well as the usual internet companies (Dell, Evesham, Mesh etc) I have seen adverts by more specialist suppliers specifically directed towards trading. For example:

http://www.tradersworld.com/computers/index.htm
http://www.digitaltigers.com/stratosphere.shtml

All very nice, but these machines do appear to come at a premium – the reason given by the sellers being that their higher quality and compatibility of components and the overall set up gives better performance and longer lifespan, and that discount companies such as those above use poor quality components and set up.

I find it very difficult to substantiate these claims or otherwise. Many large companies such as mine use Dell, for example, often left on 24hrs – and they’re not constantly failing, and neither have my home PC’s. A machine similar to the following with an upgrade to support multiple monitors would appear to come in considerably cheaper than the specialists:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dimen_9150?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Are the specialist’s claims justified or not? And if so, are they relative value for money? I would be very interested to hear the opinion of anyone who is technically informed on such matters.

D

I bought my first pc from Evesham and still think it was my best purchase. I'm running a Dell laptop now their support has been cr@p. Buy something that will easily upgrade. You needn't go for the most expensive but you will pay more for quality. Get plenty of RAM.

Ebay is a good source of quality PCs, but there could be support issues depending on what the supplier gives you.

Otherwise, Dell desktops have actually gone up in my estimations quite dramatically recently. They are very reliable but as Oaty says I don't care much for their support. They also tend to use a lot of components that aren't easily upgradeable, although this appears to be a practice that they are doing less of now - the last one I looked inside had plenty of spare RAM slots, a couple of spare IDE/SATA drive slots, upgradable PCI express graphics slot and so on - it just depends how much you want to spend.

Otherwise, if you know how to use a screwdriver, visit Ebuyer.com, buy the components and build it yourself. That's what I've done recently, although admittedly I am quite PC savvy.

I certainly don't think you need a 'trading' PC. Anything with 512MB-1GB of RAM, a decent twin port graphics card, decent-sized HDD and either a P4 or AMD64 chip will do the job with no difficulty.

I would also recommend buying the best quality, and biggest flat screens you can - eye fatigue/headaches when trading can be a big problem if you don't. given the amount of time you will be staring at them

agree with both rosso and jimbo's comments completely.

I spent £3k on a top specced Dell workstation nearly four years ago and its been running as my home trading workhorse 24hrs a day ever since with no trouble at all, and only required upgrading the CPU and GFX along the way to keep it up-to-date.

Well designed and quiet running, its heavy (if that means anything ) and the major components, PSU, drive bays are of a neat clamshell design that fold out to give easy access to the mobo and components.

As rosso said though, it reached its upgrade ceiling 18 months back and further upgrades would require a new mobo which is near impossible since Dell components are made for dell to their specs and everything is made to fit into the specific case, as well as custom ATX couplings that dont fit any other mobo's.

I'd say with Dell you'd tend to get more and better for your money than something thats been cobbled together in a PC shop since they have vast economies of scale. But of course, you'll also get what you pay for - a £200 Dell dimension is just a £200 PC whichever way you look at it.

If you want pure speed - check out the Alienware ALX systems though - sweet as! and good customer service too!

Thanks for the comments guys - very interesting. Generally it does seem that Dell are not as cheap and nasty as some of their dearer competitors would have you believe. Expandability now seems to be a key selling point on their higher priced models, which didn't use to be the case.

Unfortunately running the gauntlet of customer service depts. has become a fact of life with many products now - and voting with your feet usually means paying a premium, which may in part justify the 'specialists' costs. Horses for courses I suppose.

D

I tried building my own multi-monitor computer but I got a lot of crashes etc.
I finally broke down and bought a really nice Quad Monitor system and it runs great.
Here's what I got and I'm really happy with it:

Multiple Monitor Computer

Quad LCD Multi-Monitor Display

It pretty much looks just like this following video, except that the bezel is black on mine....

Quad Monitor Computer Video

It all cost about $2,500 with the computer and Quad LCD Display.
I hope that helps!

the reason given by the sellers being that their higher quality and compatibility of components and the overall set up gives better performance and longer lifespan

Click to expand...

Really?

I Would call that fraud. Point.

Better quality components than "normal" PC's? I can buy quality ram in any PC shop and have it put into ANY pc. Sure they can build a computer OUT OF quality parts, but if they demand a premium on top of the price of that compared to a normal shop - what do they do? Hand-Select the processors?

I call that fraud. Seriously. Trading computers can be more expensive than equal quality stuff, but the argument should be a LOT better support etc. (reducing downtime, sending replacement first etc.). The components wont be better than in any quality oriented custom build.

Hi,

I got mine from PC configured from tradingcomputersnow.com; with full satisfaction and technical support. I use it daily and there is no failure, but i wold like to recommend dell as my PC is from there and it is also working fine.

Having great working!

Thanks & Regards,
Thomas

Dell is probably a good choice for buying complete desktops/notebooks. (Although I must admit I've never bought a notebook from Dell. I pieced together Dell components on their website back in 2006. It was a Dual Core Duo 2, 4GB of RAM with an ATI X1300Pro - it still runs flawlessly to this day and it's now sitting at my parents home where it's dramatically under-used.) However, I'd always strongly suggest to spend some time learning how to put them together yourselves. It's a very easy process - the only things you have to worry about are compatibility issues, mainly with your motherboard and processor (and if you are going with AMD or INTEL) and finding a case that will allow you to upgrade for 2-3 years, depending on what you want to do.

dsn said:

I’m currently looking at various options for a new PC in the near future. As well as the usual internet companies (Dell, Evesham, Mesh etc) I have seen adverts by more specialist suppliers specifically directed towards trading. For example:

http://www.tradersworld.com/computers/index.htm
http://www.digitaltigers.com/stratosphere.shtml

All very nice, but these machines do appear to come at a premium – the reason given by the sellers being that their higher quality and compatibility of components and the overall set up gives better performance and longer lifespan, and that discount companies such as those above use poor quality components and set up.

I find it very difficult to substantiate these claims or otherwise. Many large companies such as mine use Dell, for example, often left on 24hrs – and they’re not constantly failing, and neither have my home PC’s. A machine similar to the following with an upgrade to support multiple monitors would appear to come in considerably cheaper than the specialists:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dimen_9150?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Are the specialist’s claims justified or not? And if so, are they relative value for money? I would be very interested to hear the opinion of anyone who is technically informed on such matters.

D

Click to expand...

I think it all depends on who you talk to and your own personal experience. I will soon buy a new computer myself. I have been doing some research and so far I like EZ Trading Computers. I had a very good conversation with Eddie. He is also a trader, so it was easy to communicate with him. http://tradingcomputersnow.com/

Taking a quick look at the computers offered, they are not shabby at all. In fact, quite a few of them could even run some of the recent games with a decent graphics card.

Trading in style, right there!

dsn said:

I’m currently looking at various options for a new PC in the near future. As well as the usual internet companies (Dell, Evesham, Mesh etc) I have seen adverts by more specialist suppliers specifically directed towards trading. For example:

http://www.tradersworld.com/computers/index.htm
http://www.digitaltigers.com/stratosphere.shtml

All very nice, but these machines do appear to come at a premium – the reason given by the sellers being that their higher quality and compatibility of components and the overall set up gives better performance and longer lifespan, and that discount companies such as those above use poor quality components and set up.

I find it very difficult to substantiate these claims or otherwise. Many large companies such as mine use Dell, for example, often left on 24hrs – and they’re not constantly failing, and neither have my home PC’s. A machine similar to the following with an upgrade to support multiple monitors would appear to come in considerably cheaper than the specialists:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/dimen_9150?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

Are the specialist’s claims justified or not? And if so, are they relative value for money? I would be very interested to hear the opinion of anyone who is technically informed on such matters.

D

Click to expand...

Another good company

http://tradingcomputersnow.com/