various online investment / trading sites such as etrade.com?

Barron's issues an annual ranking. It last did so on March 7, 2005. Here is an excerpt: The overarching conclusion: Online-brokerage services, as a group, are better than ever. Back when we started ranking online brokers, three stars got you near the top of the heap. Now, in our 10th survey, one browser-based broker and five software-based offerings each earned 4½ stars, double the number from last year.In a remarkable display of consistency, optionsXpress, which took top honors in 2003 and 2004, did it again this year. The firm (www.optionsxpress.com) was easily the leading browser-based brokerage, and its margin of victory was greater than that of the winner among the software-based brokers, Interactive Brokers (www.interactivebrokers.com).In the browser category, optionsXpress was followed by Ameritrade's Apex (www.ameritrade.com) and Fidelity Investments (www.fidelity.com). Among software-based competitors, Interactive narrowly beat Terra Nova Trading (www.terranovaonline.com), TradeStation (www.tradestation.com), thinkorswim (www.thinkorswim.com) and MB Trading (www.mbtrading.com).

See link for Smart Money Magazine Aug 2005 survey of: Premium Discount Brokers, Basic Discount Brokersm and Full-Service Brokers.

www.smartmoney.com