bramble, you've become really sarcastic of late. :O) I've enjoyed your posts. You even turned against old socrates and sent him running with his tail between his legs. You inspired me to write my own trading application too which is coming along, bogged down with coding my own graph module at the moment which is a surprisingly complex thing to code!
Lots of dodgy people still pouring into this site targeting the poor unfortunates who find themselves new to the game. I would give advice to any novice trader that there isn't anything you can't learn about trading that is either free here or in a decent book. The rest is testing, experimenting, hardwork and dedication. I've been down the route of forking out hundreds and even thousands for services and applications. If someone had found the road to riches, I can guarantee that they wouldn't just give it away. Its the equivalent of giving them a credit card and a pin number. If its for sale and expensive its pretty much guaranteed to not work!
Save your money and dont bother opening anything but a test trading account. Use that account until your consistently profiting, then start using money. Dont rush in as you'll only be rushing to your financial doom. JRich.. trading isn't as straight forward as you'd like to imagine. If it was, who would trapes into work everyday! Worth asking yourself that!
A good mentor is definitely worth having though, if he's cheap. If he's expensive leave it well alone as he's a failed trader! Why charge tonnes of money if your making a packet in the market?! A mentor whose cheap is probably someone doing it out of the kindness of his heart... to give something back to the poor unfortunates he's made his wealth on. A way of deminishing his sense of guilt at taking money from people who dont know what their doing so he can get on with enjoying his winnings.