The walls are up, the grid is being installed, the paint is drying. Take one more, quick tour of our unfinished warehouse as the construction nears completion!
Are 3 Year Warranties All They’re Cracked Up To Be?
We recently ran a special on all our systems, offering a free upgrade to a three year warranty. To be honest, in the current economy, I did not expect it to be terribly successful — I thought that (at this time) price was the biggest factor, and that monetary discounts might yield better results. I was wrong! The free warranty upgrades were wildly popular, and we showed a 300% boost in sales during that time. Why do you think that is? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!
The New Puget Office! – Tour #2
After months of permit issues, contractor bids, and bank paperwork, we’re happy to say our building project is finally underway! We expect that it will take about 60 days to complete, so we should be moving in to the new location sometime between Christmas and New Years.
The Secret to Marketing with Social Media
Social media has exploded in popularity over the last few years. MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon — each have a huge user base, and there are hundreds of other sites just like them. With that many people collected together, anyone in advertising or marketing knows that social media is the bright new frontier for promoting their company and products. I’ve been approached by several marketing firms saying they hold the key to successful marketing in this space, but I’ve turned them all away. Why? Because I already know the secret!
Overclocked Memory is a Scam
At Puget Systems, we’re seeing more demand these days for extreme high end computers. Triple-SLI, dual CPU, large amounts of memory – people are pushing the limits looking for more performance. We’re building more overclocked computers today than ever before, pushing the CPU and video cards to new and higher limits. One area that has been frustrating to me recently has been memory.
The New Puget Office! – Tour #1
It’s an exciting time at Puget! Due to increased sales and growth, we have outgrown our current facility. To meet the new demand for space, we purchased a new building in Auburn, WA.
To show off the new space and the progress that is being made during the build process, I will be taking my camera and shooting some video updates. The first one is found here. Be sure to keep checking back for new updates. Enjoy!
How to build a stable computer
Choosing the right hardware to go into your next computer can be challenging! It isn’t enough to simply make sure that all your parts are compatible: a few bad choices can mean the difference between having a machine you can rely on for years to come, and having a machine you’re perpetually troubleshooting and fixing…and wishing you could smash to pieces! If you buy a computer off the shelf, you have to go with what you’re given. If you build your own computer, or have one custom built, you have the power to build a great solid machine, but you also have the power to configure a machine that is prone to problems. With experience building thousands of machines, and being in direct control of our product line, I want to share some tips about how to make sure your next computer is rock solid.
Corsair Power Supplies Revisited
A few months ago, I wrote about why Puget Systems had decided to move towards Corsair power supplies (see post). I promised that I would write an update after some time had passed, with an update. I am happy to say that the power supplies have been everything we thought they would be!
We now have just under 400 computers out in the field being powered by Corsair power supplies. How many failures have we seen? One! We had one unit that would not power on, and that’s it. While I’m not sure we have a big enough sample for a definitive statement, that’s a 0.25% failure rate. That is ten times more reliable than any other power supply we’ve used! Of course, we’ll continue to closely watch them as time goes on.
A Look at Popular NAS Units
Network Attached Storage (NAS) has been on my mind quite a bit in the last year. With the birth of my son last May, my wife and I are going crazy with our digital camera, and what used to be a nice and spacious hard drive is no longer adequate. What’s worse, we’ve found that video is a much better way to capture all the little things we want to remember, which probably increases our storage needs by a factor of 100!
On the business side, we’re encountering the same thing. As our company grows, the 200GB network share we all use for shared storage has become both too small, and dangerously difficult to back up. As we expand our website with more and more multimedia content, the need for “scratch space” has grown exponentially.
Both at home and at the office, we need more space, and we need a good level of protection from data loss. A NAS is a natural choice.
Sound Cards: Creative Labs, and Alternatives
The last few days have seen a lot of negative press surrounding the largest sound card manufacturer on the block, Creative Labs. Here’s a little background on what’s happened:
Creative Labs has had a near-monopoly on the sound card market for a long time. Barring onboard sound controllers (like those integrated into almost all Nvidia and Intel based chipsets), Creative cards make up an overwhelming majority of audio cards currently in use. Creative has not done a very good job of getting Windows Vista sound drivers working which offer the same amount of features that their XP drivers have had. A lot of people have been really frustrated by this, since their expensive audio cards weren’t working or were giving reduced functionality.
