And no, you can't have one
By Ryan Block 
posted July 6th 2004 2:39PM
posted July 6th 2004 2:39PM
No, you'll probably never get to use or even see the Bloomberg Terminal, winner of a silver Industrial Design Excellence Award, but we know you wish you could. The platform is only available to Bloomberg Professional network subscribers, who pay untold thousands of dollars a month to lease the display and keyboard (which has a mic for talking to your posse), and more importantly, the software it's bundled with (from what we understand, you supply the PC). Can you believe these things are wasted on graphs and charts for starch collared stock-stiffs when we could be using them for blogging? Yet another reason we're in the wrong business.
Software that was developed and forever stuck in the 1960s. Whoopie piss if they give it a shiny keyboard. The thing will always be slow and clunky on the inside.
(note: I worked as a developer for finacial institutions for 3 years in NYC.)
They make great background eye candy, but yeah, other than that... Nothing like ASCII to make one feel all nostalgic-like.
I have dual 19" CRTs... I like that better...
Give me dual 19" CRTs and a Fujitsuheavy duty keyboard anyday. Only thing better would be dual 21" LCDs
I worked for months on the bond trading floor at Morgan on Wall Street and all the traders ever used Bloomberg for was to keep up on their sports book.
JW
Some of us 'stock-stiffs' use our multi-display systems for trading AND blogging!
Having worked on a trading floor for some 10yrs I can assure you that you are NOT in the "wrong business"...great-looking Bloomberg terminals are small consolation for the inane pursuit of wealth accumulation at any cost (even if it does provide ample funds for a gadget fetish!)
Bloomberg is a great tool and some Bloomberg users even read your website! ;-)
The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Mesuem has one on display. And anybody who wants to mess around with it can.