To the best of my knowledge, it’s been at least six years since we’ve written about life behind-the-scenes here at Puget Systems. So we’re going to kick off a whole new generation of newsletters – focused more on the people and less the technology – as we dive into this summer season of 2014. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse of what working at Puget Systems is really like, day to day.
The first computer I purchased arrived at my home with two operating systems: DOS and Windows 3.1. Most full-fledged programs ran in DOS, including nearly every game in the early 1990s. Besides pool, the game I played most during my college years was called Links Golf which ran in DOS. Without Links I’m convinced my GPA would be at least a half grade higher. I offset my Links addiction by installing WordPerfect for DOS which allowed me to write reports from home instead of the school’s computer lab
Several times a year my father would score Utah Jazz tickets, and being the oldest son, meant I was the one to accompany him to Salt Lake City to watch the games at the old Salt Palace arena. I sat next to my father for the hour-long drive from our home in northern Utah and knew we were getting close when I could see the arena that looked like a large wedding cake.
For the next two hours I’d cheer on the Jazz against their rivals such as the Portland Trailblazers or the Seattle Sonics. The Jazz were my team and my loyalty knew no bounds. I wore Jazz jerseys, collected player cards, and could tell you how many assists John Stockton needed to overtake Magic Johnson as the all-time assists leader.
There is a game in development I have been following for almost a year now, and which I am extremely excited about. For anyone who was into PC gaming back in the 90s, the genius behind the Wing Commander series of games and Freelancer has returned to the game scene, to create the ‘best darn space simulator ever’: Star Citizen. It is a very ambitious project, entirely crowd-funded, with almost $44 million raised so far from its fanbase. Because this game is being crowd funded, the development team has opened up to the game’s backers – giving information out in a consistent stream, and details that would normally only be delivered to a publisher that was funding the game. We are the publisher, in a sense, and getting to be this involved in the process of making a game is fascinating and engrossing to me.
I recently returned from Las Vegas where I attended an Intel partner event. Over the course of three days, I was able to listen to many speakers give us their predictions for the future of computing. We were presented with demos of fancy all-in-one PCs, sleek new laptops as well as beefy workstations powered by quad Xeons. If Intel was building chips for it, we saw it or heard about it.
This weekend a few of us from Puget Systems made the trip to Bellingham, WA for LinuxFest 2014. Two days of total immersion into the world of Linux and open source. Having recently made the plunge by setting up a native install of Ubuntu on my primary work machine, I thought this would be a great event to soak in the culture and goings-on of the free and open-source software (FOSS) community.
Just over a year ago I wrote how Solid State Drives (SSD) were soaring in popularity. At that time we offered a number of SSD models from Intel. But due to production constraints, we were on the verge of adding a few Samsung SSDs to the mix. Around this same time we began fielding a number of requests for Samsung SSDs.
Once considered a luxury item, SSDs have moved into the mainstream within the past two years. Our customers tend to be tech savvy and performance demanding to the core. So I wasn’t surprised to find widescale adoption of SSDs as I dove into the sales data.
I spent yesterday attending the Seattle stop of the VMware User Group (VMUG) Conference. It was a totally worthwhile event for catching up with all that is going on in the VMware world. If you didn’t already know Puget Systems has been a VMware Partner for quite some time now, we even use a number of their products to run Puget Systems.
We thought it would be fun to compare a few of the statistics gathered by Netmarketshare to those we track through Google Analytics for visitors to Puget Systems.
According to Netmarketshare, they are the standard in tracking technology usage market share. They have been collecting and analysing data since 1999 and, while not without controversy, are highly regarded in their approach to ranking the most popular operating systems and web browsers.
I posted a few weeks ago regarding my move to Linux. I received some great feedback from our readers, and encouragement to continue posting about my experiences. If there is something specific about the Linux experience you would like me to discuss, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Hopefully, you will find these posts helpful.
Two weeks have passed since I walked away from Windows and a couple of things have really struck me in that time.
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
