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I’ve been using the Square for about 3 years (USA). It accepts Visa, MC, Discover, Amer. Express, etc. Their fee is 2.5% which is MUCH less than most merchant fees via a bank. It has a ‘reader” chip that plugs into my iPhone’s headphone spot (or tablet). It will work via Service provider or WiFi if available. All data is encrypted. You can also phone in the credit card number. They deposit the transaction(s) at the end of the day directly into my bank account.

Never have had a problem, and have saved much $$ compared to my old bank merchant account. It is great for the small business owner.

Jim

I also have a small IT consulting and repair business, and ran for almost 5 years without the need to take a credit card, mostly because I wasn’t willing to pay the per-charge and then the monthly maintenance fees associated with processing them.

Square fixed that. I’m willing to take a 2.5% hit on my business income on a transaction, although I am considering putting the fee back on the client for the priv to use a card as a payment device. Most will then pay with a check, saving me (and them) the fee.

IF you manually enter the card number, Square charges you a slightly higher rate to process. Not sure why.

Square does not charge a monthly fee – only per-charge transaction fees.

BTW, Ive only used Square one time and that’s been in 5 months – no fees, no nagging to use it, etc. So it silently waits until I need it and then it will work. And I got the payment in my bank account in 2 days.

One thing to be aware of: Cards with Chips require a special reader from Square and its not free, I think I remember the least expensive adapter is around $30 USD, and they do also offer a chip reader with NFC for $50. The old mag stripe reader without chip reader is still free, but I keep hearing noise that there will be surcharges by the CC industry if a card is presented and the stripe is used without trying the chip first (I guess that they can tell if chip was tried and then the card was swiped). So I spent the $30 and got the least expensive one (another BTW – you have to charge a battery in the new Square chip readers using USB, the old stripe reader didn’t require special power connections)

I would strongly recommend Square – especially for a small business or hobbyist.

Good Luck!

Will G aka wmgoat

The Optimization is just a defrag, although I don’t know what background tasks Norton carries out when the machine is idle, as it often reports it is doing.

My ISP is Comcast and they give us Norton too. Ive been turning off all the “Maintenance” tasks, including their backup, optimization, History cleaning, etc. and only using their FW and AV stuff as long as Ive been using Norton. I use MS defrag since the days of Vista, and I use Malwarebytes for protection of Adware and Spyware – Norton misses most of the things that MBAM regularly catches.

I still havent found an all inclusive tune up tool that I can trust, although Norton does make an impressive attempt to do this, however poorly it actually does. So I do what I can on my own, using several individual tools that have proven reputations.

I was wondering if I could downgrade the Windows 7 Professional installation to Win 7 home to get Windows 10?

Why downgrade? And BTW, as JoeP517 says, you dont have license to upgrade to anything other than Win 10 Pro.

No downgrades allowed – you have to stay with the same license level.

the bigger question is why did it fail the upgrade to win 10 pro? How far did you get? did you get an error code?

1. The disk in a VM looks like a standard disk and can be partitioned / formatted / assigned any drive letter allowed by the OS. As FUN said, it’s actually a file or files, so you can add space to the disk by adding additional file space from your physical disk in real time.

2. The VM manager use the maximum RAM you have allocated as an upper limit. If the OS doesn’t use that much RAM the VM also uses less from the physical pool. You can have more VMs running than you have RAM and the manager will juggle, but the VMs will be slower.

3. Restoring to a VM requires that you have the correct drivers and configuration, the same as restoring to different hardware. You can convert your MR image to VHD.

4. See disk expansion in 1 above.

5. You can use the CD as a boot device but I prefer to mount ISO images direct – they are really fast in this mode.

6. USB access is dedicated and cannot be shared, but you can dis/connect in real time. This is required to prevent corruption.

7. Any of the free offerings are good. Use the one you like the look of.

Notes
When you create a VM you need to place the files in a folder. You should use the fastest disk you have for these files – mine all run from my SSD, which is also C: in Windows.
Avoid external storage for VM working files, disks, ISO etc. They are OK for transfer, but most VMs allow host to VM transfer.
You must have a CPU that has in-built virtualization for VMs to run well – some won’t run without. What CPU do you have?

cheers, Paul

CPU is an Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core processor 3800+

Also some clarification: in your note section, What files need to go into the folder? Files for what – the VM, the image, ?

Rather than run Macrium Reflect (or any other backup App) within the Virtual machine OS, I suggest you simply include the whole VM with your other system and/or file backups from within your main desktop.

thats a great idea. But my question should have been better phrased: I want to restore the image to the new VM – its an old xp version thats fully patched to xp eol. How do I do that i.e. will Macrium’s restore disk see an VM [disk space]?

Another thing to consider once you have cleaned it out is the addition of a case fan, if you have a spot to mount it. Or another one, if you already have one. Dont forget to make the airflow to move from the inside of the case outward.

DONT USE A VACUUM CLEANER to clean out the dust – it could generate static and do all kinds of damage to your system board and RAM. Canned air or clean/dry air from a compressor is the preferred method.

It’s no consolation but I’ve ripped quite a few CDs to MP3, about 30MB worth, then I Copied the resultant Folders from my Desktop Music Folder [Win7] to a portable HDD and can play them on other devices without the DRM popping up. I’ve tried a few of the transfer cables with their software and the results were never fully satisfying. Only music files I’ve had trouble with was iTunes when setting up a new computer for a client.

Ive also done the MP3 thing with multiple copies between devices and never had DRM issues. But then again, I dont buy anything from Apple either. Most of my mp3 files are self-ripped from original CDs to MP3. I have recently purchased a few (older) digital MP3 albums from Amazon, and didnt run into any copy issues that Im aware of.

BTW, Ive yet to find a transfer cable that works, Ive given up after 3 different attempts.

Windows Media Player 7, 8, 9 and 10 supports license backup and restore features, try this first.

FairUse4WM removes the digital rights management (DRM) from your Windows Media files.

If the tower has been recovered, i.e. reloaded to factory settings, arent any licenses gone?

Paul,

thats what I thought. MSBackup of this guys app is worthless. why a “techie” would ever tell a business client that they are protected with MS Backup for apps is beyond me.

Ill go with Macrium Free and image, then setup recurring images to the new external drive.

Guys, in your replies, you didnt answer if MS backup did indeed backup app data that I could restore if Hd failed.

Im under impression that MSbackup, even if you backup app, when doing a restore of the app, does not give you a working version of the app. It would also have to restore the registry as well, correct? So backup of the app is worthless, since when it is recovered, its a non executable app since it doesnt have any registry entries. Only imaging would work to save that for a functional backup.

Does anyone know of a software product that does do an app backup so that when the app directory by itself is restored in case of failure, it runs? Keep in mind that these apps keep their data within the same app folder, so its not a simple “save the data in the documents folder” and then reload the program.

It would be worth you looking through the vast range of Nir Sofer’s utilities[/url]. Even though I’ve used them for ages, there’s always a new one I come across when I need something!

Looks like he has done a number of viewing tools but this one one that came up with being associated with HackTool when I downloaded it and scanned the zip file.

Oh baby, oh baby, your friend isnt the only one taken recently by a phone call saying they are from Microsoft. These guys are really really good in persuading their callers that their systems are infected, and generate all kinds of statistics and popups to support their claim. They even give out phone numbers for clients to call back, get a switchboard autoattendent that implies MS support, and make this whole thing sound like “they are here to help you”.

I run a small PC service and have gotten many, many calls from mature adults (50 and over) that have been called by these guys in the last month. It seems that they are targeting area codes that have lots of seniors in them And Ill say that more than half have been bitten. The other half are at least wary, some to the point where they called me to see if its legit. (Im glad that I have that level of trust with my clients)

Please, Please, put the word out, especially to your older clients that are more gullible, that these guys are frauds. Microsoft, like the IRS and your bank, will never call you, and anyone saying that they represent MS should immediately be suspect. And if they have provided their CC to these guys, have them call their CC sponsors and get their cards replaced.

I didnt get the upgrade notice, and used to. It appears that if you didnt have a registered copy of the version before the upgrade, you dont get the offer, unless the sales are really down and then Acronis marketing starts dredging up former clients.

I bailed from Acronis back after the 2012 version, went to Macrium Reflect. I only use the imaging functionality so dont really need the features offered and didnt find that an upgrade was worth the price. I do a Karen Kenworthy Replicator copy of the data from each system I have nightly to a NAS box, and that works fine for me.

Re MSSE, I use it, Woody Leonhard of Windows Secrets recommends it, and so far, I haven’t seen a situation where it didn’t work, if combined with a good spyware protector like Malwarebytes or SuperAntiSpyware. If MS is taking a back seat for MSSE on XP, Ill go to another free vendor, but so far, what Ive read is that they aren’t backing off. But is does make sense to me that if they get out of XP support, their products would no longer support it either.

I support systems in an adult only community and I would bet that 90% or more of the systems I see are still XP based. Most of these people are on fixed budgets and what they have (in terms of a PC) suits them fine – they have limited needs and really don’t need to upgrade unless something breaks and the cost of repair is more than the cost of a new machine. Also, most of them are very allergic to CHANGE – think of technically supporting your 70+ mother, father, etc. Its a challenge, but one that I like because the personal rewards are great.

Many businesses will also be in the same boat, from what Ive read, XP is still the prevalent OS at business, regardless of the upgrade warnings that MS has been making over the last 3 years to upgrade. Win 7 Enterprise is gaining ground but still has a long way to go to be the dominant OS for business.

April 2014 end of support for XP WILL cause them a problem. Has anyone heard of a startup or established company that will be offering free or fee based XP patch updates? I have to believe that this will be available somewhere, and by a reputable organization.

Im too weary to consider doing it myself and honestly dont have that level of ambition any longer.

Great ideas to remove old Java versions, been doing that for years because new versions are supposed to be downversion compatible. But what about MSXML? Most of these look like patches on patches….

Also what about Visual C++ redistributables? I must have at least 10 of those on my system.  Is it safe to remove old versions of those too, or are they not always compatible? Id hope that developers dont write to specific versions of these, but if I delete the old ones, will I break something?