Renaming symbols?

["Gary Fritz" <fritz@xxxxxxxx>]

I have TS4.  I turned off the Morning Update last year to avoid Y2k 
problems.  I never turned it back on again until recently.  I 
realized it was taking a LONG time to plot charts, and I wondered why 
the 5min files didn't help any.  Then I noticed they hadn't been 
updated since 1999.  Hm.  So I turned on the Morning Update, rebuilt 
the 5min files, and tried again.  Sure enough, charts built about 10x 
faster -- until I received the first tick of realtime data, after 
which TS4 apparently ignores the 5min files.  Thanks a heap.

But in the meantime I'd forgotten about another little side effect of 
running the Morning Update -- renaming expired contracts.  Personally 
I like naming contracts SP0Z instead of SPM00.  That way contracts 
sort into proper time order.  I especially don't like having some 
(recent) contracts named using the SP0Z convention and older 
contracts named using the SPM00 convention.

So I turned off the Morning Update.  I ran without it for 9 months, 
so I can probably live without it.  But I'm wondering if there's any 
reason NOT to rename the symbols.  I tried it on a few symbols I 
didn't care about, and it seemed to take a long time to do such a 
simple operation.  Obviously it's doing more than just changing the 
name in a table somewhere.

Is it a Bad Idea to rename a bunch of symbols for any reason, or is 
it relatively safe?

Is there any reason I can't leave the Morning Update off forever?

Gary