Don’t Let Upgrades Get You Down

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Kristina Bond

Sold on the promise of unlimited connectivity to all my music on all of my devices, I bought into the iCloud. Without reading much about iCloud beyond the name and then deducing that anything Apple produces must be perfect and work exactly as my fanciful mind could imagine, I dropped some cash on OS X Lion and proceeded to upgrade my computer so it could support this new magical creation. What I soon discovered after three and a half hours of downloads, installs, and reboots on an early Sunday morning was that my head was in the cloud, not my music. And, to make the situation worse, my computer no longer functioned like the computer I once owned. It was actually about 50% of the machine I knew and loved for so long. I couldn’t even look at it without sighing heavily and bowing in defeat.

The sequence of events following my upgrade has been mentally painful and costly. I lost support for my Adobe Creative Suite and had to purchase a new version. My monitor calibration device is not supported, either. I have ceased backing up my machine because my Mac was no longer compatible with our NAS box software. Flash video plays terribly and requires a system reboot to jump-start my graphics acceleration to previous performance levels. Windows have forgotten their zip and are choppy when minimized and maximized. And worst of all? The tens of thousands of songs I had access to from our music library on our server sit unplayable and untouched because OS X Lion and our server don’t want to place nicely with each other. Continue reading →

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Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support Gets Longer

Posted on October 21, 2011 by JP Ishaq

Standardization is both the blessing and curse of embedded suppliers and customers. It’s a tightrope walk with long drops to either side: obsolescence and the march of technology on one, redevelopment costs on the other. Generally speaking we err on the side of caution. While we love new tech and strive to bring the latest and greatest to market, the longer the lifetime of a product, the easier it is to offer a standardized solution to customers.

We spend a lot of time agonizing over the anticipated lifetime of each product, putting a lot of emphasis on Embedded Life Cycles, supplier roadmaps, and anticipated end-of-life dates. Luckily for our industry, most of our suppliers provide long-life offerings aimed specifically at the project market.

Add to the list of long-life products Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04, slated for a release in April of 2012. It has just been given an expanded LTS (Long Term Support) period of five(!) years, increased from the typical three. That means that through early 2017, enterprise users will still be able to enjoy the same support, even after Ubuntu 14.04 is released in 2014. We often get the question of why we prefer the LTS releases of Ubuntu, and why we still support 10.04 in the face of newer releases such as 11.04 and 11.10. Aside from the obvious advantage of longer support cycles and guaranteed updates, the non-LTS versions tend to innovate more but the LTS products such as 10.04 and the upcoming 12.04 offer users a more stable and predictable application environment.

According to Canonical’s press release, the overwhelming majority of their server users have standardized on Long Term Support releases of their product, and more and more organizations are migrating to Ubuntu. The ability for a developer to standardize on both hardware and software with such extended life cycles is crucial for minimizing the time and costs associated with redeveloping a new platform.

How important is the extended support period of a product to you? Let us know!

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How Do You Choose Your Computer Hardware?

Posted on October 20, 2011 by James Floyd

Chances are if you are reading this blog, you are likely well-informed about the latest technology and are positioned to make educated buying decisions when it comes to picking the right computer hardware. Because of this, you are likely a resource for everyone you know when it comes to new computer purchases or troubleshooting hardware issues: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, and colleagues all value your input.

Over the years many of us here at Logic Supply have found ourselves in the same position, and our sales team takes this technical consultation to another level with our customers—ranging from consumers to CEOs at publicly traded companies.  And while we would love to talk all day with people about computers and their applications, there is only so many of us. For this reason (along with another notable one: engineers and technical people prefer to do their homework first, then call us), we have worked very hard to provide our customers with the appropriate toolsfor self-selecting the best hardware that is right for them.

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Do Not Try This At Home: Increase Drive Capacity Using Salt

Posted on October 17, 2011 by JP Ishaq

The cost per gigabyte has been dropping steadily. As little as five years ago, a 500 GB hard drive was considered an excessive amount of storage for any organization but the Library of Congress. “How will my application ever fill that much space?” we asked.

And yet, here we are in 2011 with our two TB drives full. It’s not just a matter of increasing capacity, however; larger drives do actually require larger housings, because there’s only so much storage density you can pack on a platter (or a flash chip, for SSD users). In traditional spinning platter drives, additional platters are needed to increase capacity beyond a certain point. This, in turn, increases the height of the drive. For space-constrained applications (which many embedded applications are), there is not a lot of room to grow. Certain 1-U rackmount cases, for instance, will have a hard time accommodating taller drives, and most hot-swap trays aren’t set up to accept unusually-sized drives.

Enter household table salt. In a brilliant move or possibly an accident that proves it’s OK to eat in the lab despite OSHA warnings, a Singapore research team led by Dr. Joel Yang have refined a process for increasing hard drive density sixfold. The secret ingredient? You guessed it: sodium chloride. Continue reading →

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Come See Us at the Vermont Tech Jam 2011

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Erika

Logic Supply will be attending the Vermont Tech Jam on October 28th and 29th. The Vermont Tech Jam was originally started as a way to bring attention to the numerous technology companies in Vermont, with the hopes that the talented, newly graduated students would consider pursuing a career in the state. Logic Supply has been attending the Tech Jam since its start in 2008.

This is a fun event for Logic Supply because we have the opportunity to showcase our geekery. In 2009, we created an application with our 12.1” Industrial LCD Touchscreen, GW-01 system and a fish tank. The touch screen was connected to the GW-01 system, which was submerged under water, and controlled the bubbles and lights in the fish tank. The rubber ducky was thrown in for good measure.

Last year, we stepped it up a notch.

Continue reading →

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