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Change to Apple $10,000 Budget

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Ah, sorry, for some reason I thought it was based on OpenBSD, and that BSD was just the Berkley flavour of Linux... My mistake.

I'm happy to simulate things through Virtual Machines, but not happy to run my applications full time on VMs. I find even with a 4 disc RAID 10 returning more than 170Mb/s, it still isn't "snappy" enough. I ran Amibroker for a while on a VM, but I found it to be a bit laggy when doing back tests, mainly due to harddrive hits. Moving it to the host made it very fast though.

That said, the RAID 10 is getting a bit long in the tooth considering I could buy two SSDs and RAID 1 them, for double that speed at half the price I paid for the original RAID 10 array... Oh well, technology moves fast.
 
Sunder said:
and that BSD was just the Berkley flavour of Linux...
Click to expand...
BSD came first, Linux is the ugly stepchild

I'm happy to simulate things through Virtual Machines, but not happy to run my applications full time on VMs. I find even with a 4 disc RAID 10 returning more than 170Mb/s, it still isn't "snappy" enough.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you need to tune your box a bit better, give it lots of RAM. Try moving each half of the mirror onto different disk controllers.
I ran Amibroker for a while on a VM, but I found it to be a bit laggy when doing back tests, mainly due to harddrive hits. Moving it to the host made it very fast though.
Click to expand...
Yep, more RAM, remove all the virtual memory in the guest operating system entirely if you can.
Oh well, technology moves fast.
Click to expand...
It's insane, isn't it. Computers I got 3 years ago are ancient now, even 2 year old technology is looking very long in the tooth.
 
170mbs? heheh how old is this system?
Sata 2 drives are at 3Gps now.
If you want real HD performance you would get a SST solid state drive which is faster again.

GG wants to run basic programs, he does not want to run Autocad
or anything else that is going to chew that much cpu even under VM conditions. besides if you really wanted to, you can stuff 8 gig of ram in a macbook pro...

The best thing to do is to get a mac shop to install a copy of ami demo or some such etc on a machine running VM ware etc and try it out. This is all moot till you can see it running yourself and have a play around.

GG if you bought the mac over the net customs would hit you up.
If you bought it there physically and brought it back sans box you would get through easy, I have done it. Apple Care is transferable world wide & the power supply is switchable, all you need is a plug adaptor. or a change to a AU mac end.

The difference between a top end Windows laptop and a Mac version running Office type apps for stability now is practically nil. Whatever you buy if its a mac ditch safari and run Firfox if it's a PC ditch Explorer and run Firefox heh..

The problems come when you are using high end apps that call heavily on cpu, threading etc Your not going to be doing that.

The difference is going to be for you in how you like the way the OS looks and works. Macs are way more intuitive than Windows, hence why windows 7 is trying work like a mac. Macs don't get viruses or malware (yet).

At the end of the day it's what you like to look at and feel comfortable using. They both have flaws, their machines after all.

I love tinkering with my PC, upgrading boards etc but my mac ****s on the PC for ease of use & everything else I use it for & it's puuurty to boot
 
Thanks everyone, it never ceases to amaze me the intellectual rigour of asf posters and the knowledge we can share on this forum.

Thanks.

I was in my local newsagents picking up my lotto winnings today and bought some apple magazines, and much of the stuff you all have discussed is in there.

I'll be going mac before dec 31.

btw. Does anyone know if Metastock can be run through wine?

Or is that a silly question. Is wine just for online or for load em up programmes.

Same question for parallel and other share with microsoft programmes.

Thanks for your patience with me.

gg
 
GG,

Just for a bit of think outside the box, since you have such a decent budget to play with, have you considered buying a trading workstation running Windows, and accessing it from a Mac laptop?

I have a living room PC, which is a Dell Studio Hybrid, running Vista (yeah I know!), which is a home theater PC and runs my trading apps. It has a HDMI out to my 46" Sony LCD TV, and fibre audio out to my Denon surround system and is hooked into my home local-area-network (wireless or wired, up to you).

I use logmein.com to access the trading workstation from anywhere I have access to a PC and an Internet connection. I run Amibroker there, and Premium Data, and Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation. For example, this weekend I am in Sweden, so I will be managing my trades remotely, using my laptop and logmein.

When I'm at home I sit on the couch with my Logitech diNovo in front of 46" of HD Sony glory and manage my trades for the week. After that I put in a blueray and enjoy that, or if friends are over we might play a bit of "youtube.com/xl", or perhaps I catch up on a bit of ASF.

Using remote desktop or some equivalent remote access system to reach your trading tools on a workstation is 100% workable. My girlfriend uses it to remote control her AutoCAD workstation at the office, and that application is much heavier in terms of user interaction requirements than any trading application is going to be... unless you trade real time.

I reckon I could procure all of the above, including the TV and the Denon and the software licenses for somewhere around your 10K AUD budget.
 
theasxgorilla said:
Just for a bit of think outside the box, since you have such a decent budget to play with, have you considered buying a trading workstation running Windows, and accessing it from a Mac laptop?
Click to expand...

Damn, I didn't even know half of that stuff was possible.

I'm such a nuff nuff when it comes to hi tech stuff
 
Vizion said:
170mbs? heheh how old is this system?
Sata 2 drives are at 3Gps now.
If you want real HD performance you would get a SST solid state drive which is faster again.
Click to expand...

So... With this SATA 2 drive of yours, I dare you to make a copy of a 3Gb file. It'll only take 2 seconds right, one to read, one to write?

3Gbps (300MBps) is the interface speed mate. Even the fastest Solid State Drives these days can only push 240MBps read, and 170MBps write.

Your average SATA-300 hard drive will return more like 70MBps.
 

1. Have 4GB and no paging.

2. ICH10-R doesn't allow you to assign which hard drive holds which data. I presume it's internally optimised.
 
I knew if I posted that It would get a bite...

Mate you cant drop numbers without qualifying them.
170mbs what, where, when, how? You never said that was continuous transfer rate did you?

As a case in point, this is the specs on a drive case I just bought.

• Transfer Rates Up to 3Gbps W/ eSATA
• Transfer Rates Up to 480Mbps W/ Usb 2.0 (12Mbps W/ USB1.1)

If you where a non techie looking at that you would be going Oooh sweet... but max sustained transfer rate in mechanical drives right now is still only about 130mbs which is actually within the capabilities of the older ATA/133 specification. Flash drives are faster at about 200mbs.

One other thing

Did he not mention he wants a laptop? Raid 10 or if you like raid 1+0 as you know needs 4 drives, & its normally run in servers needing the best fault tolerance. He wants to chart and surf the net... Why even mention Raid if you are not going to explain what Raid is ?

Unless you make it clear what you are talking about and not just dropping jargon to be knowledgeably all you are doing is confusing people.

BTW running the workstation and the laptop is a good idea, if you do that try running a freeware program called Synergy. It will let you control both machines from one keyboard and mouse over a home LAN. Works a treat with my bluetooth keyboard and mouse
 
Seeing that there are a number of knowledgeable 'gents' on this thread , I will put forward another dumba$$ question.
I run a number of communications softwares [unlockers for mobile phones], that will work ONLY on XP. As I understand , you can run windows 'within' the Apple platform, correct? If so ,therefore I SHOULD be able to use Mac systems? Now the issue I have is that many of these software add-ons play havoc with anti-virus' operations , and downloading files of servers can be chaotic. I am now forced to run all 5 laptops without antivirus'.
NOW, if I run windows 'within' Mac, can I free myself of the antivirus curse?,and are antivirus' needed for Mac at all? Cheers to those who can help..:
 
Try free virtualisation products. It allows you to run multiple operating systems at the same time. I use it for testing malware because a lot of malware detects online scanners like Anubis
 

... Right... Let's start again with introductions this time. Hi Pot, I'm kettle... What did you just say about my colour?

We were talking about our experiences with virtualisation, and I was just sharing mine, which were less than satisfactory with quite heavy duty hardware.

That said, I work full time in IT. "Jargon", is my native language and it slips through without thinking about it. No need to make a big deal about it. If people were confused, they'd ask.
 
If you don't need the latest equipment, you can get refurbished apple stuff... usually the battery/casing/anything aesthetic is replaced for quite a discount. . Sometimes its up to 50% off from the apple store. And it comes with a shorter (3-6 month) manufacturers warranty.

It's down on the left hand column of the apple store near the bottom.. most people don't even know about it or notice it.
 
HC Victim said:
NOW, if I run windows 'within' Mac, can I free myself of the antivirus curse?
Click to expand...
Nope. If you run a Windows 'guest' in a virtual machine it's the whole of Windows running there, kernel, drivers, memory management, storage, Internet Explorer, etc. and all it's associated foibles.
,and are antivirus' needed for Mac at all?
Click to expand...
Depends on your usage and level of paranoia. I don't run any, but I know there are AV products available.

n.
 
Thanks for all the good advice. Some of it is way above my head, my fault not yours.

I know zilch about IT.

Suppose I've bought a Macbook pro 17" and say Office for Mac., and I'm connected to the net via my router.

Now say I want to run something like my old MS XP inside the Macbook Pro, download my data from paritech and run Metastock 9.0.

What do I have to physically do, to get the XP, the metastock and the paritech downloader in to my Mac..

And what extras do I need?

gg
 
Cheers Marklar , thanks for the heads up! Was hoping I could be freed of the microsoft/antivirus roundabout , but might give the Mac a bash for interest sake anyways...
 
You'll need something to host XP as a guest. Personally I prefer VMWare Fusion (around $100).
Then you need an XP license, these are NOT FREE, and no, you probably can't legally transfer the one you got with your PC. Yes Windows operating systems are expensive, there's a reason more and more people are looking at free alternatives like Linux.
Then you create a new Virtual Machine using Fusion, allocate it some CPU, RAM (min 256Mb) & disk space (min 2Gb) and tell it to boot from your XP install CD. Fusion will allow you to share your Mac's network connection (NAT) and will obtain an IP address automatically for you, no need to worry about networking and all that stuff, it just works.

Once XP is installed you can install the rest of your software like metastock just the same as if it was a regular PC. If you select "unity" mode the XP applications appear side-by-side with your Mac applications, you don't see the XP desktop anymore .

m.
 

Thanks mate.

gg
 
Just a heads up re metastock 10(i think thats the latest?)...you cannot run it in a virtual environment due to the way it handles its licensing (I found out the hard way, luckily I purchased the monthly data option and not the outright software)

So you would still need another machine to purely run metastock or change to another charting package
 
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