after several minutes of clicking around trying to locate a post of patrick's the other day, i finally gave up and just used the search feature...... turned out to be several good posts on that same subject..... a post by wabbit the other day got me into studying...... it appears there are a lot of subtle factors to consider when comparing systems..... 3 of those are stock meta's, 2 are power pivots plus plugins and 2 are mine.... my 117 is just a 'long' and 'short' version of the 'long' only 17, neither is spectacular..... improving on one of the catergories in the summary would be a worthwhile goal in itself...... improving trade efficiency should have some positive side effects on several of the others..... so it might be the first goal......h