Spend money on the random access memory. Concentrate less on the processor. You'll probably want to have at least 2 gigabytes of RAM. Also opt for faster memory if available. Fewer clocks cycles necessary for each instruction translates to faster execution.

There are many other things you can do. When you're running Explorer expect a 100 percent duty cycle but add a program that throttles back the processor when it is inactive. That lowers the heat generated and reduces the cooling needs.

A dual core processor may help especially if you want to do other things while the explorer is running.

Compare the transfer speed specifications of the available hard disk drives. Opt for the fastest and make sure that caching is enabled.

Consider overclocking the processor. You can probably safely boost the speed by twenty percent.

Thank you Charlie for your help/advice.

I have been tweaking my computer for quite a few months now. Defragmenting, registry etc cleaning - though no overclocking which would be interesting to do...

I just ran out of time and patience, reinstalling Metastock and the custom indicators, layouts etc. I even lost acces to some of my chart data which I had not backed up.

I found that I could double the overal performance of my current machine for each 250 Euro invested. I needed a second notebook anyway. Custom building with Dell is not even so flexible as I remember it from earlier years so just got a fast processor with 4GB DDR3 RAM from a local store here...and hope for the best.

Many thanks for the hints again,

Klaus

As the processing speed is the bottleneck with MS for me I have bought a quad core i7 system. Interestingly it is not much faster than on my 4 year old Celeron M 1.5Ghz single core. 7 out of 8 cores are doing nothing while one single logical core is running at 100%. I mainly use the explorer for system testing and it clearly is neither designed for multithreading nor does it use 64 Bit. I would happlily pay for an upgrade or a plug in/patch that adds 64bits and/or multiple threads support!! If there is any programmer out there who could switch those explorer dlls into ones that create mulitple threads - please contact me! Thanks link how to create such C++ dlls: http://www.informit.com/...es/article.aspx?p=169479 and http://www.intel.com/cd/...r/asmo-na/eng/377933.htm

FWIW, my laptop's primary function is to be a whole-system backup for the desktop, but while it's not doing anything else, I use it as an extra monitor, via MaxiVista.