lisa,
Since everyone is throwing in their two cents, I might as well too.
>>>Plus if you want the truth , the quality of the monitor is the most important thing to me....i don't want my eyeballs to burn when I am trading these indexes!<<<
I couldn't agree more. The quality of the I/O devices is key. The Viewsonic p815 is the highest subjective quality monitor that I've ever seen. I could quote tech spec's from now 'till doomsday, but I sense that will bore you. You can't buy this monitor packaged with DELL, CPQ's, etc., but you can buy a system w/o monitor. This baby is around $1800 and will last you two or three computers. Hitachi also has an accuvue model that's excellent.(all 21", there is no alternative if you can afford it).
Sorry, kw, I despise trinitron monitors with their horizontal seam lines.
A PII-266(MMX), is a good choice for CPU. Sure you could buy less. But this should push you out the farthest on the obsolesence curve. PII 300 is not worth it for 9% gain in CPU power.
I like the Matrox card recomended. 64Meg dram is a great choice. More is no good unless your running some huge CAD or database application. Less is not enough, you'll be closing things cause others a dragging. Maximize your L2 cache, you'll never be sorry.
I recommend WIN 95/97 over NT unless you're in a heavy networking environment. There are many more drivers available to WIN95 for than NT and it's much better for playing games, if you do any of that. Get office 97 also and ask for original installation CD's.
6 gigs or better for HD, why not, they're cheap enough. Less than I payed for a 200Meg in '92.
Internet connection? USRX V.everything is the best analog modem I've ever used by far. It's also upgradable from floppy to Flash ROM for any advances, or if the Rockwell standard wins out.
If you're going to get a cable or ISDN modem, you will buy all the Hardware in a package. Call your phone company or cable company first. 30% of phone areas and 90% of cable areas do not offer these services.
12x-24x cdrom is fine, they're all cheap. Zip or Jazz for backup, tape sucks. A keyboard and mouse that you really like is really important.
One of the most important things people don't consider is furniture. I've gotten the impression that you're petite. You need to find sufficently adjustable furniture to maintain good posture/breathing so you can scream (with jubilation of course) at those OEX/SPX option quotes. :) And so that you're less likely to get repetitive stress injuries.
I've got some recent reviews PII systems from computer shopper/PC magazine and could probably find a URL of these articles if you're interested.
~$4200. w/o furniture.
Phew. All JMHO.
PS I like the Dell boxes FWIW. |
