Hi Tess,
You seem pretty respected in this thread so I appreciate the reply.
3 hours later, Oanda's finally back up... Do you think this is really prevalent at other houses as well? It just seems surprising that a company that handles so much $ wouldn't have better backup... Where were the backup servers?! The occasional blip in service I could understand, but 3 hours seems like a long time! Maybe you are right, and I am being too naive b/c of my noobiness to have these expectations? Luckily, their outage did not adversely affect any of my live trades. The big problem is that since I don't like using Windows, I am stuck with a java-based solution, and Oanda seemed the best when I did my initial research. I guess I will try to shrug this off and continue to trade, warily, for a few more months as I read up on other brokers and then make a decision. However, if all of the brokers have these problems, it does not inspire much confidence.
Thanks for the advice -