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What Our Customers Have to Say About Windows 8

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Windows 8 has been out for about a year and a half now, and it is common knowledge that Microsoft’s newest operating system has received mixed reactions. The new start screen (I still have to stop myself from calling it Metro!) is a jolting departure from the user interface that Windows users have been accustomed to using since 1995. One unique thing we do here at Puget Systems, is we reach out to nearly all of our customers after they have had a chance to use their new PC. We ask them how it is working for them, and what we could have done better. We learn a LOT. So, what do our customers have to say about Windows 8, and what is Puget Systems doing to respond?

Qualification: LSI 9341-8i & 9361-8i RAID Controllers

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At Puget Systems, we’ve been using LSI RAID cards for a number of years now and have always been very happy with the quality of both the controllers and the MegaRAID software. The new 9361-8i and 9341-8i RAID controllers from LSI continue in their predecessor’s footsteps but add PCI-E 3.0 support and the new mini-SAS HD SFF8643 12GB/s connector.

Compute Performance: Ivy Bridge-E vs. Haswell

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How does the Ivy Bridge-E Core i7-4960X (Extreme edition) do against the Haswell Core i7-4770 running the Linpack benchmark? The Ivy Bridge-E 4960X is a great processor — 6 cores, 4GHz max turbo clock, 4 memory channels, 40 PCIe lanes, big price tag … However, the humble Haswell 4770 has it’s AVX2 and FMA3 secret weapons which are really effective on linear/matrix algebra type of numerical computing problems. …

New Apple Mac Pro vs Genesis Workstation PC

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By now, most folks have seen Apple’s updated Mac Pro – or as I like to call it, the trash can. I kid, I kid! In all seriousness, though, we are often asked how our workstations – like the Genesis line – compare to the hardware Apple has put in the new, miniature Mac Pro. Read on to find out…

7 Signs You May Have A Virus

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Our customers occasionally call us with questions about a virus or malware they’ve heard about. They want to make sure their computer hasn’t been compromised, but they aren’t sure what symptoms to look for.

We designed this article to help you determine if your computer has been compromised.

Windows to Linux

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This weekend I did something I never thought I would do: I moved away from Windows.

I ran Windows 7 on a Traverse laptop since I came to work here almost 18 months ago, and personally since I was a kid, starting with Win 3.1x.

After all that time amd experience I can’t take it anymore. I have jumped ship and I am not coming back. This weekend I wiped my Windows install and loaded Ubuntu 12.04 LTS onto my primary drive. Physically, installing the new OS was easy; only after installing the OS did I realize there was a psychological effect I had not really counted on.

Focus Pocus

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I recently attended an industry event with speakers representing a number of the largest technology companies in the world. An executive from Lenovo kicked off the event with a presentation that explained how their future was dependent on how well they could sell smartphones. I don’t doubt his sincerity because a few weeks later Google off-loaded their Motorola handset business to Lenovo for a few billion and pocket change.

Not long after this event Lenovo purchased IBM’s server business to take on Dell and HP which have expressed varying degrees of interest selling PCs over the past few years.

Depending on the week, HP is either “all in” on smartphones or leaving them behind to focus on something new and exciting. It’s getting nearly impossible to say who is selling what anymore. Many of the traditional PC companies appear to be selling everything except PCs!

Which brings me to the point of this post: Focus is difficult.

Windows XP End of Support: What does it mean for you?

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The End Of Support deadline for Windows XP quickly approaching, and many users do not have a very good understanding of what exactly this means. In this Q&A article, we want to answer what “end of support” actually means for all the computers out there that are still running Windows XP.