Blog Posts

The Top Video Cards (as determined by our customers)

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When it comes to building a custom PC, one of the most important selections is the graphics card. What used to be viewed as a distinction, often limited to gaming systems is now a vital part of many computers ranging from post-production workstations to trading PCs requiring support for 8+ monitors.

Since the number of choices for graphics cards can be overwhelming, we cull through many brands and models until we find those which meet our performance and reliability standards. Only then do we offer specific brands and models for placement in a computer crafted by Puget Systems.

Solid State Drives Soar in Popularity

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It wasn’t long ago that Solid State Drives (SSD) were considered a luxury item, reserved for those who demanded drive speeds only SSDs can deliver. The first generation of SSDs were not only limited in capacity (40 and 60 GB models were popular) but were very expensive, often costing more than $500. That makes for a difficult sell when a mechanical drive could be had for about half the the price and nearly 10x the capacity.

Starting in the first quarter of 2011, companies such as Intel, Corsair, Samsung and other began dropping prices on their SSDs. At Puget Systems we’ve found Intel to build a reliable and fast SSD at a reasonable price and have consolidated our offerings around their main lines.

#Fail

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If you want to work at Puget Systems you have to be ready for things to work a bit differently than your last job. You see, here, we are obsessed about a few things and one of them is failure. Everything and everyone has every failure, ever, tracked in our database. Want to know what the failure rate is for a particular stick of RAM? We know it. Want to know how many times your favorite employee has forgotten to add the required build notes to an order? We document their every transgression. We fail things for even the most seemingly inconsequential reason, right down to the smallest scratch you might not have even noticed. Perfection matters. Every week, during our staff meetings, all of the logged failures from the previous week are listed for everyone to see and you get to share with everyone your epic fail.

Tough stuff for the Puget staff, huh?

Not really. Nobody is running around, ducking for cover, while avoiding the axe from Jon. Although that might make for an interesting game it’s not what we do all of this for…it’s for you.

“For what? My entertainment?” you might ask. Nope, for your future sanity.

The Digital Ecosystem

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For many years my computing universe orbited around my Windows PC. For instance, the first time I searched Google, updated my status on Facebook or replied to an email I was using a PC.

But that’s not the case for many kids today where their first interaction with a computer is an iPod Touch, tablet or smartphone. Their computing universe resides on a small touch screen, and is dominated by apps. My world recently clashed with that of my 11-year old daughter when I asked for her email address and she replied that nobody emails anymore.

The Craft of PC Building

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Some recent news from Apple is creating a lot of talk about manufacturing technology products right here in the US. This is reflecting a move many manufacturers are making by insourcing many aspects of their production.

These companies are learning what we have known here for a long time: we are better off building and supporting the things we sell.

Most of these companies are making the decision to bring manufacturing lines back to the USA for financial reasons. Although every company has to make a profit to plow ahead I think there are some other reasons, besides the financial, that drive our decision to keep virtually all of our operations in-house. Here at Puget Systems those other reasons are also the two big drivers in our decision making process: customer experience and quality of product. No place in our business do those two values show more than in the production department. Here, the craftsmanship of PC building is taken on by a dedicated staff of technicians that leave their personal touch on every system they build.

Comparing Windows 8 to Windows 7 Sales

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Last week Microsoft announced sales of Windows 8 licenses have reached 40 million. They provided few details other than adding that most of those were upgrades and that Windows 8 was selling at a faster clip than Windows 7 did three years ago. Of course, this comes several weeks after Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, told a French newspaper that sales of their new Surface tablet, running Windows 8 RT, have gotten off to a “modest” start.

Windows 8: Surviving without the Start Menu

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As a sales representative at Puget Systems, I’m often asked by customers considering a new PC if they should have us install Windows 7 or the new Windows 8 operating system. When I began running Windows 8 a few months ago, I kept a running list of features I enjoyed along with a few I found perplexing. Over time, my list has grown and contracted, but a few items on each side of the coin have remained.

One of my coworkers has already put together a helpful list of new features while another helps you decide if Windows 8 is right for you. I’m going to take a different approach by sharing my Windows 8 experience with those of you whom I don’t get to speak or email with each day.

Is Windows 8 Right For You?

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Windows 8 launches this fall, on October 26th to be precise, and it is shaping up to be the most controversial Windows edition ever. Past versions like Vista and Millennium Edition were underwhelming, certainly, and others like Windows 95 and XP changed the face of Windows dramatically – but each new version has generally been an attempt to improve the user experience. Some focused on better performance, others on a newer and sleeker interface… and while there were both successes and failures Microsoft has managed to maintain dominance in the PC operating system market.

The latest version of Windows, however, has a lot more to it than just a shiny new taskbar or updated applications: it represents a shift in the whole interface from a traditionally mouse-centered approach to a touch-centric design. The last time that Microsoft tried to add an interface option to Windows was Media Center, which was introduced part-way through the life-cycle of Windows XP and brought a ‘ten foot’ interface designed for use in a living room. That was simply an added interface option on top of the normal Windows UI, though, while Windows 8 has completely removed large parts of the traditional interface that PC users have become accustomed to.

Our Favorite Games: MechWarrior Online

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MechWarrior Online (often shortened to MWO) is an upcoming “free to play” action simulator, the latest game in the well known MechWarrior series which is in turn based on the BattleTech tabletop game and novels. For those familiar with the franchise the setting is going to put you right at home: you are a MechWarrior, piloting a 20-100 ton bipedal war machine called a BattleMech. The graphics and controls are greatly updated from previous games, the last of which was published more than a decade ago, but the core game-play is very similar.

The main difference from past games is that they tended to be single player, story-driven games – which had small, tacked-on multi-player game modes. MechWarrior Online lives up to its name in that it is all about online multi-player battles – there is no single player option, and no specific story line. Instead, the game is set within the BattleTech universe at a specific point in the established history. Time in the game’s setting is progressing in a 1:1 fashion with the real world: each day there are news announcements pertaining to events going on in the fictional future time period, and eventually this will be integrated into a meta-game where territory is actively fought over by players. That all has yet to be implemented, but should be a huge draw for both competitive gamers / groups and long-time BattleTech fans when it arrives.

Core i3 vs. i5 vs. i7 – Which one is right for you?

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With each new generation of Intel processors, the answer to this question gets more complex. There are currently three distinct product lines including processors named ‘Core i5’, three product lines including processors named ‘Core i3’, and a whopping five distinct lines including processors with the ‘Core i7’ name.