nt is a good choice. ib is a good choice. the pair is NOT the best choice.
it is ok to use it for free or almost for free with the data waiver. when it comes to live you have serious disadvantages over other brokers:
first of all the data feed of ib is crap. compare the data feeds of ib to any other industry leading provider like zenfire/rithmic or cqg. even tt which i will talk about later.
ib charges an arm and a leg for data that you can get from other brokers for free. globex is free with ib, if you want to trade instruments not on globex- tf,gold futures, dax etc you will pay a few hundred bucks a month just for the data that you can get for free from other brokers. ib has also a limit on historical data requests. when you pull up different charts you will get error messages and be blocked for five minutes. i find that annoying.
i still love ib- it is my favorite broker. i even trade futures with ib. swingtrading of course...
for scalping and autotrading i use different systems and brokers.
for nt i recomment any vision broker with 64bit api rithmic feed or amp with 64bit api connecting to cqg. avoid tt under any circumstances. their api is from the computing stone age 32bit and the have no intention to take it to the 21st century. also with tt there will be no info in your nt. no account info, no cash info, when you keep a position overnight it will give you completely wrong information
it should be easy to find a broker in the commission range of ib offering a better data feed for free.