Duane,
I'm sure that this will generate a host of "you just don't get it" posts from the dissatisfied, but I will answer nonetheless.
I THINK THIS IS THE SINGLE BEST QUOTE AND CHART PROGRAM AVAILABLE UNDER $500-600 PER MONTH. Is it perfect? No. Does it get blamed for a lot of connectivity issues? No doubt. On balance, I believe this company to have the largest number of servers (most redundancy) of any quote service I have used and I currently have three. There are some on this thread who have legitimate issues. They tend to be traders whos style requires a relatively large "hot list" of active symbols and a constant flipping between charts of those symbols. If this is your style, good luck. But then, good luck anywhere. The internet is still relatively primative and data flow issues and bandwidth remain the biggest challenge facing this frontier.
There are also a fair amount of "gripers" who want to pay for the cheapest level of service and receive the features of the full package, those who feel like their world will not be right until Q-Charts prints a manual (funny, I have MS Office 97, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Quicken 98 which all probably sold more copies than any other software in the history of software and not a single one came with a manual and I somehow managed to use and enjoy them anyway).
I highly recommend the service. Have had nearly no problems at all. Much less than any previous or present quote service (BMI, DTN, Bridge, PC Quote, S&P Comstock, Townsend RT-3, Interquote-- satellite, cable, and internet). If you are a 100 symbol chart flipper, God bless you... I don't know what to recommend-- probably a trading room with lots of redundancy and a direct line to several providers. For less demanding use, I don't think you can beat Q Charts.
Finally, Q-Charts has recently closed their acquisition by Lycos. There are some personnel changes involved and the normal organizational issues happening right now so this is a very tough time considering their recent rapid growth. Furthermore, this past weekend they rolled out a new version of the web based product (as you have probably noticed) and I'm sure that their customer service department was overwhelmed yesterday, as the new version had a couple of "new features" which were not particularly popular. I'd give them a day or so (or email the support guys directly which generally is a quicker way of getting to knowledgable tech support guys anyway). If I can answer any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I am a very satisfied user, although I have grown weary of trying to help those whose demands are probably too high for this product or those who seem to not want to resolve their issues, but just to gripe. By and large, there are many satisfied users out there in spite of the acquisition, the parabolic growth (and the resulting support lag), and the normal technical issues associated with the net.
Matt |
