Just opened a Swissquote account and did my first trade this week (down CHF 50 so far... ). The whole process was very fast and simple. You have to get an authenticated copy of your ID, but you can do it at the Post Office for free, which made everything very easy. They even gave me CHF 200 of credit to use against transaction fees, and I got a courtesy call to check if everything was ok once the account was opened, and who was actually able to answer my question about the possibility of shorting (only on the Eurex apparently).