AUSTIN, TEXAS — BOXX Technologies has announced the winner of their search for the oldest BOXX workstation still in daily use by its original owner. The winner was Andrew Pingle, principal at Omni-Zygo, a New York City architectural design firm that provides ecologically sustainable solutions to corporations, architects, engineers, and others.
Second place went to Thomas Faber, who received an NVIDIA K5000 graphics card, followed by Peter Moyer (winner of a NVIDIA K4000 card). Pingle was awarded a new 3DBOXX 4150 XTREME workstation.
"BOXX performance consultants and technical support are always relaying stories from BOXXsters whose machines are still running strong after many years," says BOXX Marketing Manager Marie Friemann. "We thought it would be interesting to discover which original purchaser had the longest running system, but we never anticipated the volume of entries or how much fun this would turn out to be. We have some incredibly loyal and talented customers."
BOXX launched their search (dubbed WANTED) on September 3, 2013, and immediately received numerous entries-some of which have been assembled in a popular You Tube video. Using the purchase date as the deciding factor, BOXX determined that Pingle captured the oldest BOXX title by a mere seven days, buying his system on April 5, 2001. His was one of multiple entries received from that year while others clocked in at anywhere from five to eleven years old. Pingle still runs the Windows 2000 operating system on his old BOXX and demonstrates in his video entry how remarkably fast the machine boots up. "It's extremely fast and stable," he boasts. "Have you ever seen a desktop open up that quickly?"
Instead of employing a standard notification process, BOXX relied on Pingle's friend and fellow BOXX user, noted cartoonist/animator M. Wartella (Village VOICE, Cartoon Network's
MAD) to unveil the surprise through an elaborate ruse. Under the guise of a video interview, Wartella lured Pingle to a video conference room where BOXX writer/producer John Vondrak, via teleconference from BOXX headquarters in Austin, Texas, posed as a journalist from an online animation magazine. Vondrak began the telephone interview, and then quickly shifted gears, announcing that Pingle had won. Watch the video
here.
Though excited to win a new BOXX system, Pingle seems reluctant to retire his old workstation. "I'm curious to see if I can keep it going for another ten or twenty years," he laughs. Pingle may be encouraged to put the old system out to pasture, however, once he samples the new 3DBOXX 4150 XTREME with its overclocked, 4th generation, Intel Core i7 processor capable of running up to 4.3 GHz. XTREME also features liquid cooling, NVIDIA Maximus technology, and a compact chassis ideal for space-constrained environments. XTREME provides outstanding support for engineering, product design, architectural visualization, 3D animation, motion media, and other applications.
No one was more excited about Pingle's new workstation than his friend Wartella. "Andrew is the person who turned me on to BOXX computers," says Wartella. "In addition to being a great guy, he's also an unsung hero and true pioneer in the green architecture field. He really needed a new BOXX and totally deserved it."
Although many of the Omni-Zygo green projects consist of residential and commercial properties or helping companies reduce their burden on the environment while increasing profit, Pingle is most proud of his firm's involvement in clean water and disaster relief efforts (both U.S. and international) where they have designed means to provide clean water, as well as sustainable, seismically-resilient housing. When discussing these projects, he credits the manufacturer of his incredibly reliable workstation and their legendary technical support team as contributors to his efforts. "BOXX has been an integral and indispensable part of all that good work," he says. "It is a truly amazing and refreshing service experience to work with them."