TradingView.com
guys, i got an email introducing tradingview.com. don't know how they got my email address. was cursing at first until i saw the product in action. very cool. you get a free charting platform in your browser that actually works and has an UI that is responsive. it's a nice backup solution in case MT4 or whatever other charting solution you are using craps out on you like MT4 did to me today.
i mean, seriously, what a POS this MT4. apparently i am running too many scripts and the damn software just freezes for 20 to 50 secs at a time sometimes before refreshing the screen. can you believe it? so i was really lucky i got this email today. i was able to still see what the hell was going on by switching over to tradingview.com.
also, even if you use some solid solution like CQG, eSignal, or MultiCharts, if suddenly the feed goes down, doesn't matter how great your software is: you are now flying blind! so it's useful to have a spare wheel on a different feed, especially if your broker gives you 2 different feeds, that is, one for charting and one for trading--the data is not different, but when the chart feed goes down, you still get the quote feed and still can talk to the order server because it's separate from the charting app: in this case, another charting app will let you see whether or not there is a setup to enter a trade or manage an already open trade.
anyway, redundancy never hurt anybody. ;-)