We all seem to like our products with lots of features, especially when it comes to computers. After all, the personal computer is supposed to be the most versatile piece of electronics that you own, right? How can it be versatile without a long list of features? When it comes down to deciding what product to buy, one of the first things we do is put the features side by side, and see which gives us more capabilities for the dollar. What are we missing?
When we began development of our Echo PC, we quickly saw how NIVIDA ION would bring a new life to home theater PCs. The small form factor, low power draw, and near-silent operation are the perfect makings for a computer in the living room. As more content is put online, the PC is fast becoming a cheap alternative for home entertainment. But the strength of NVIDIA ION lies in the GPU, and applications that take advantage of GPU acceleration are anything but mature. In our testing, we found that ION was extremely well suited for DVD/BLU-RAY playback, and for Netflix. But Hulu — the final piece in the trio of current online entertainment — was not ready. Fullscreen playback was not acceptable on ION. We knew that NVIDIA and Adobe were working together on the problem. We waited.
It seems like everyone has been excited about the recent release of Intel’s second-generation solid state drives (SSDs) this week. I am the proud owner of one of the first-gen models, and the idea that more affordable models will help more people to adopt this technology is just cause for celebration.
It came as quite a shock to me, then, when we were told to hold delivery of the drives to end-users this morning – just before our first shipment came in to the Puget warehouse.
Earlier this week Microsoft made public the release candidate for their next OS – Windows 7. It is available as a free download from them, which will be good until March of 2010 (with limited usability for a few months after that)… so like many other tech enthusiasts I downloaded it and gave it a spin.
I’ve always had a rocky relationship with dual GPU video cards. Our first bad experience was with the NVIDIA 7950GX2, which we found over time to suffer from higher shipping damage rates. The NVIDIA 9800GX2 was even worse. Now the NVIDIA GTX 295 is the major NVIDIA dual GPU card on the market. Are we set up for a repeat experience?
There has been quite a bit of talk recently about Intel Core i7 CPUs and what temperature they should be running. The Core i7 CPUs have a TDP of 130W, and run quite hot compared to the Core 2 Quad CPUs we’ve used in the past. How hot is too hot? A Google search shows that there is massive confusion and misinformation around the web. In the absense of good information, I decided to find out for myself. As an Intel Premier Provider, I talked to an Intel engineer, and am writing to tell you what I found.
I’m very happy to be writing this post from our new offices, where we have been operating now for two weeks. When we bought a new warehouse last May, I can honestly say I had no idea how much time and effort it would take to get the construction done and our company moved. Now that we’re done, I’m excited to be back and focusing on the business (not the building!). Having purchased this building, there are two messages I want to make sure to put out there…
When it comes to memory manufacturers, we’ve been around the block…a few times. We’ve learned a lot in the process — too much to keep to ourselves! For each memory manufacturer we’ve used in the past, we have thousands of sticks of memory out in the field, and that gives us some good objective experience. I wanted to take a minute to comment on the various memory manufacturers we have experience with, share our stories, and to explain why we are standardizing on Kingston memory going forward.
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!
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.
Puget Systems builds custom workstations, servers and storage solutions tailored for your work.
We provide:
Extensive performance testing
making you more productive and giving better value for your money
Reliable computers
with fewer crashes means more time working & less time waiting
Support that understands
your complex workflows and can get you back up & running ASAP
A proven track record
as shown by our case studies and customer testimonials
