Qcharts On a Mobile Laptop

[jhill1965]

Hi all,
I am looking for advice on how I can upgrade my laptop to go mobile with wireless connectivity through a vendor like ATT or Verizon. What are minimum config for a mobile laptop and how well does Qcharts perform under a reduced connection speed? I am planning to go on some trips in the coming months and access to LAN or WiFi will not be consistently available.

Thanks for the help in advance.

cheers
jwh

[JimRutherford]

Re: Qcharts On a Mobile Laptop

Originally posted by jhill1965
how well does Qcharts perform under a reduced connection speed?

Good morning. I believe the minimum hardware config for QCharts is posted on the download page. How does QCharts perform on a reduced bandwidth connection? That all depends on how much you are asking it to do. Just remember that during market hours QCharts is constantly obtaining price updates for all symbols in the workspace that you have open as well as constantly calculating and building all charts in that workspace.

What I have learned to do is to trim my primary workspace down to only those symbols that I am really interested in during a given day and to save that workspace under a different name. Then when I go back to doing my homework in the evening I delete that day's workspace, revert to my primary and then save as a reduced workspace again for the next day.

My primary workspace contains roughly 280 symbols including markets, indices, futures, splits, etc. and 10 charts. Using an ATT mobile wireless card during open market hours with that many symbols is painful at best but it works fine after market hours. Not nearly as robust as my regular DSL connection but certainly well enough to accomplish what I need to when I am away from home and have no better alternative.

How many symbols are too many or not during the day? I would suggest you experiment to find out what works best for you.

Regards

Jim

[tradertom]

I use a Sprint broadband PCMCIA card (old school, I know) in a wireless router. This way, I can place the router where the tower signal is best and there is no need to install anything on the computer; anyone can share the internet assuming I give them the password to the router (like any secured wireless connection). There are USB wireless routers available as well.

I have used Sprint "Unlimited" broadband for a few years now, but last spring they changed "Unlimited" to "Limited" but they never told me and the monthly bill STILL says "Unlimited". So in the summer when my broadband wireless usage is greatest, I went over the newly imposed limit and they sent a threatening letter. Needless to say, I am less than thrilled with Sprint and could NEVER recommend them. Oh and in addition to changing the meaning of the word "unlimited," I think they have also rewritten the definition of "customer service" as well but the new definition is not fit to print... Once my contract expires I will be canceling Sprint forever.

Like Jim said, the slower network over broadband cellular can be a bit frustrating but even on my older laptop, QCharts runs well enough. I also have an abbreviated workspace on the laptop with 7 charts, three quotesheets and maybe 150 symbols (mostly stocks but also indices and futures). The workspace is MUCH smaller but I can see 5 charts at a time which is adequate for my trading. I try not to change symbols much during RTH.

I am interested in hearing some recommendations for wireless broadband vendors, especially those having unlimited options.

[billbled]

Jim's advice is on the mark.

One thing I'd add from personal experience - I used (a few years ago) a Sprint EVDO card on my laptop. It had unltd bandwidth at the time - I don't think they do that now. Seems like nowadays all of these "air cards" have a monthly bandwidth limit.

In that case, I'd suggest one of the Essential Tools that Larry got me hooked on years ago - DU Meter. You can see it here: http://www.dumeter.com

It will give you a report card on the amount of traffic coming thru your connection. I'd download it, run it for a few weeks, see the report card on what amount of bandwith I'm using and make adjustments to my workspace from there so I could foreseeably fit in the bandwidth window for the card I was using.

Tom's absolutely correct - it's all about the workspace. In support I get this question emailed in fairly often - "How much bandwidth does QCharts take to run?" and I answer them with "It entirely depends on your workspace."

DU Meter is a great tool to monitor that and to get a real number to fill in that blank.

(Full disclosure: I have no relationship with DU Meter, I don't get one red cent if you buy it, no family member is associated with DU Meter, nobody I know will benefit from you buying their software. Your mileage may vary. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.)

[billbled]

Hey Guys,
Back when I was doing research on broadband cards, these sites were helpful:

http://www.evdoinfo.com/

http://www.evdoforums.com/

[tradertom]

Once again Bill is spot on. http://www.evdoinfo.com/ is a good resource for various broadband services even beyond EVDO (Sprint) and DU Meter is a great tool also! Good stuff Bill! Thanks for posting.

[jhill1965]

Update

Thanks everyone for the responses,

I think I have broken this down into several areas that need to be addressed:

PC Hardware: My laptop is top of the line (or was when I got it 1 year ago) so I don’t think I have any issue there. I certainly meet the minimum standards for Qcharts.

Mobile Hardware: Seems like I can use a mobile broadband Modem or Card and get a mobile broadband plan or I can get a new phone that is broadband capable and use that as the modem.
• I am weighing my options here. I went to Verizon’s site since I am a current customer and like my service. It appears that if I have the correct type of phone then a 5G monthly plan add on is $15. But I want to go with a card/modem then the plan is $60 for $5. I am going to call and verify with Verizon. Does anyone have any experience with both and have an opinion to share?


Bandwidth Consumption: It seems pretty clear that in order to keep consumption low and make Qcharts work more efficiently then a smaller workspace is in order for use during market hours. I think a larger space might be fine for afterhours but I will have to work that out for myself. I have to be careful for the 5G limit.
• I will be downloading the DU Meter to test my workspace consumption. Has anyone used DU meter to test a tire-builder workspace?

Bandwidth Speed: It seems like EVDO Rev A access will provide speeds comparable to low end DSL speeds and nowhere near cable modem speeds. The Verizon plan seems to have EVDO Rev 0 access where faster access is not available. So even if it is slower at least I will be connected. Again seems like this can be mitigated by have a small optimized workspace.

Is there anyone out there who is using Verizon with a broadband mobile card/modem or using a broadband capable phone as a modem? If so, do you have any lessons learned you would share?

Thanks to Jim, Bill, TraderTom. I still have lots of work to do but I appreciate you guys getting me started. I will report back on what I learn and how I end up making a decision for my particular requirements.

Cheers
jwh

[tradertom]

Hey jwh, just a few more thoughts. First, I use a tirebuilder workspace and have used DU meter (though not routinely any more) and it works just fine. I think the data usage issue is directly related to the volume total of all the symbols in your workspace. If you have lots of stocks that are not active, or if you have only one or two stocks on the workspace that trade a lot, your usage will be less than if you are trying to watch many stocks that are actively traded during RTH. Nightime usage is dramatically lower for obvious reasons; no volume, no trading on most equities and lower volume on futures, etc at night. I use a small workspace with very few stocks during RTH and my normal workspace for research at night when using my broadband card.

Second, EVDO Rev A is not really that bad as far as pure speed goes. I use it (Sprint) with the wireless router and my ping times are dang close to what I get at home with the highest end DSL I can get. Not too bad in real usage too esp downloading data (except for that limited data thing). EVDO Rev 0 is basically no good for QCharts at all.

Lastly, if you can use your phone as a modem (a.k.a. "tethered"), then the bottleneck will likely be in the link between the phone and computer; I use bluetooth with my ATT phone and it is horribly slow for anything besides downloading a few small emails. Wired USB is faster but overall the performance is pretty bad. May just be ATT. Also, don't know about Verizon, but ATT says you cannot use a smartphone as a broadband modem (they decide what the definition of a smartphone is.) I rarely use my non-smartphone for that purpose anyway but it will work in a pinch.

As with most things, broadband cellular is a tradeoff but the convenience is wonderful when there is no chance for a wireless connection. Good luck and keep us informed on how it goes! As I said, I will be back in that market soon and Verizon is a viable option for me!

(Like Bill, I have absolutely no interest in any of these companies other than what they can do for me as a customer; in that regard, Sprint fails miserably.)

[jhill1965]

Update

TraderTom. Thanks for the insight. I found out another tire builder trader has a wireless modem setup for his laptop but he is travelling out of the country for 2 weeks. I think he has some answers to all our questions. I am going to sit tight until I hear from him. Once I determine what my config will be I will psot it for comment before I commit to see if any of you all have opinions. Should take me about 3-4 weeks. Will post back then.

jwh

[tradertom]

jwh, I'm glad to hear that. It is always good to get as many opinions on these things as you can otherwise you could get saddled with a 2 year contract that doesn't work for you and cellular providers love to collect early termination fees!

Just as an aside, I have found that Remote Desktop works pretty well at cellular broadband speeds and I think using less bandwidth than connecting to QCharts directly. At a minimum the bandwidth is constant; you can use any number of symbols on your workspace and still not use as much bandwidth. But you should also make RD more secure than Microsoft does by default; I am a bit obsessive on IT security and RD is a bit vulnerable if one uses its defaults. Some of the lengths I go to are pretty arcane but I think they are necessary to thwart mischievous hackers. You could also use GoMyPC or PCAnywhere services as well because they offer more options than does RD.

Don't hesitate to PM me if you'd like more info; we could discuss specifics in more detail offline.

[carbuff]

Tom,

I would be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the Remote Desktop approach to accessing QCharts. I've been thinking about picking up a new phone with a WVGA screen that I could use to RD into my home machine which is running QCharts. So I'd like to hear what your choice of phone / OS is, how well it worked viewing QCharts on such a device, and how 'interactive' you can be with it (ie: selecting different symbols, size of a chart, do you have a specific workspace that you use for this purpose, etc). In other words, anything that you would be willing to share would be great! And if you don't want to share that all here, PM would be fine as well...

Thanx!

[tradertom]

Hey carbuff, hope you are doing well!

I have not used Remote Desktop directly on a phone; I have used a phone as a tethered broadband modem for a laptop and then used RD to connect the laptop to my home desktop PC and it worked adequately. In my experience using a laptop, a different workspace is a good idea because upon an RD connection, my 4 monitor workspace is all but unusable after it is collapsed to the single, smaller monitor of the laptop.

I think Windows Mobile has an RD client but I couldn't say how well it would translate keystrokes, alerts, etc, or how it would manage to fit an XP display to the phone's tiny screen. I have no experience with this but maybe someone else could chime in. Sorry I'm no help at all using a phone as an RD client.

Good luck and keep us informed.