Point of Sale Software

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Improving your WIFI

POS SOFTWARE

Image removed.

 

WIFI now is indispensable and here are some tips if you have problems with your WIFI signal in your retail shop.

Measure the problem

You cannot do much till you have measurements, the WIFI app that I like to use to help me judge WIFI signal strength is WIFI Overview 360 Pro available on google play free. I suggest you first get a copy. 

Now look at the position of the modem

All too often technicians tend to put the cables so modems in the office area which is an out of the way place in the shop. As walls and doors all block the WIFI signal so putting the modem in the office room is often wrong. This is not good for WIFI modems. The WIFI modem should be as central as possible in the shop hopefully near the main areas where people use WIFI.

Move things away

Move away from anything from the modem that blocks the signal.

Up higher

What we find works well is to raise the WIFI modem, the higher the better. Because it sometimes is an eyesore what you can do is put the modem in a nice material bag and hang it up on the wall. Do not use a plastic bag for this. 

Silver foil

A neat trick here which you can experiment with to boost the WIFI signal is put silver foil between the modem and the wall. Some WIFI signal in the shop will bounce off the metal foil back onto the modem.

Reduce the number of devices you use

Try reducing the number of items using the WIFI in the shop, too many WIFI devices can cause problems. Maybe you cannot provide all your staff with WIFI in the shop to their mobile phone. 

Reduce electrical interference 

Try to reduce the electrical interference particularly from other WIFI modems. I remember going to a neighbours shop and talking to the owner there to make some compromise in the positions of the WIFI modems as their modem was interfering with our client's modem. This is a particularly big problem in shopping centres where there are heaps of WIFI modems, cordless phones, etc all belching radio signals. 

Try changing the channels on your modem

Try changing the channels that your WIFI modem uses. As a rule, 5 GHz is faster but works on a shorter distance while 2.4 GHz gives a longer range. Experiment with both and see what works best for you.

Antenna adjustment

Try putting the antennas in different directions say one vertically and the other flat. WIFI signals come from all different directions.

So there it is, now see how these tips go for you.

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Microsoft's Windows 10 future

POS SOFTWARE

Win10.jpg

I was reading this report on the Microsoft financial report here. {link been removed}

Most of their revenue now comes from cloud-based products like Office 365.

Still, they are doing well out of Windows 10 updates. I am not surprised as its an excellent product and as a result, we have upgraded almost all our clients to Windows 10, but Microsoft has only about a year and a bit, of these upgrade left as Windows 7's free support which is very limited now will end on the 14 January 2020. 

The article does state that Microsoft "has no intention of leaving money on the table, even if there never will be an explicit Windows X-to-Windows Y transition" but what does that mean for Windows, we still do not know?

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Time to change passwords

POS SOFTWARE

 

Well, 2018, just started and it now time, if you have not recently done so already, to change your passwords. Even if it something as trivial as adding a character "8" to the front of an existing password, it is a big step forward in security.

Passwords should regularly be changed, I know someone last year who was in family court. His ex-wife was claiming that he had broken into her email account. When told that he did not know the password, she claimed he could have worked it out knowing some details about her. I thought when I heard that, if so why had she not already changed the password if these email accounts were so important to her?

In 2017, many companies and organisations and we thought the headlines of big data breaches couldn’t get any worse, one of the most significant data breaches was in the US a police site.

The other problem is that all that is needed for someone to crack your computers is one employee with a password like "123456", then if a hackers tries and break into your system what they will do is try these well-known passwords in your system. If you have a few people who have access, then they now have a reasonable chance of cracking your system. Furthermore besides your possible loss, if your suppliers or clients suffer damage as a result of this hack then you are liable. Many people mistakenly believe that because their suppliers like MasterCard and Visa take responsibility for the debt that they are okay. This is not always true. What happens in these situations is that these suppliers will look into recovering their monies at the retailer if they can, and this is what they do with fines and legal costs.

Also check here. This is a website that has a list of email addresses that have been publically hacked.

Small harddrive

POS SOFTWARE

 

If you have a small hard drive, what can happen is that you can start to run out of room?

When clients need more space on their hard drive, what I do is load a program to look for the extremely large files, which have dates in them that are very old. Generally, these are very old backup files say five (5) year old plus. Also what I look for is video files, generally once people have seen them they no longer require them.

This program is called Wiztree can help you get more space but be careful before using it.

 

 

 

 

Adverting using slideshow software

POS SOFTWARE

One common problem is what to do with old computers, videos and monitors. Well one solution is to use them in advertising with slideshow software.

 

Simply take an old monitor, put it somewhere in the front window and have it advertise your products and services. If you want a professional photographer can make you a video, and they are not that expensive. If, on the other hand, you want to make it yourself its not that hard and actually its a lot of fun and quite rewarding. The added advantage is also that once you know how to do it, it's a great source of enjoyment to people. I find that people really like a video as a present like after going to a wedding. What I do is send the bride and groom a video and they always love it.

The big advantage in a retail shop is that if you know how to make it yourself, you can change it yourself regularly. Plus if you do it yourself all, it will cost you is your time and some electricity.

What a slideshow software does it take many still photos and displays them one after another in an entertaining way one after another in a video. Overall, they are fairly easy to use.

As the movie you create will need to be about 5 to 20 minutes, and I would recommend about 5 minutes.

Each still photo is displayed in retail about 5 to 6 seconds. Each picture has a gap of about 1 to 2 seconds. This is all very approximate as I find that often each photo demands a different amount of display time. If you are trying to present a complex image, you may need much more, if you are trying to say, "We have tons of greeting cards," then you may want less time for each image. So as such you need about 45 photos. Many you can get from the supplier, but I doubt its really worth the hassle. Simply walk through the shop after it has a clean. Carry around a black sheet of paper to put products on it and go with your modern smartphone taking high-quality photos, the higher quality the better. As you will probably be rejecting about 75% of the photos, you take, you need about 160, which should take you about 30 minutes of your photoshot. Trying to take each photo is some reasonable order. It makes it easier later, otherwise you will need to sort to get them into some logical order.

Now put these images on your computer, and go through and delete the ones you do not want. Be ruthless as you can always go back and get some more. This is one big advantage an amateur photographer has over a professional photographer; the amateur can go back and get more photos if required.

Now load up your slideshow software.

The one I use is proshow, now I am not recommending it because I have never used any other slideshow software. It was recommended to me many years ago by a professional photographer. It was more than good enough for me, so I stuck with it. I will say that I think using it is one of those things that is easy to do on your third attempt. The first two attempts were very hard for me to use; I remember. Proshow does come with a free trial so you can try it to see if it works for you free. I know several professional photographers that use it. If you rather there is a free slideshow software Microsoft Photo Story 3 which may be more than enough for you and there are plenty you will find if you do a google search. You better check how hard it is to use some if you are going down this track as I noticed one came with a manual of 1200 pages. Looking at it, I am sure the results are awesome if someone has the time to work it out. What I would recommend is that you try the Microsoft Photo Story, if that is not sophisticated enough for you, then you look further, but at least, then you will know what you require.

One point is what you do need is the ability to enter in captions with product and shop details. This is very important. On the other hand, I do not recommend sound in point of sale environments, if only because it will drive you crazy hearing it repeatedly the same tune.

Now create your video. Mount it on the old computer, often on a DVD or USB stick and let it play.

If you proceed down this track, please let me know how you went.

 

Have hackers stolen your email details?

POS SOFTWARE

Very soon a search engine of hacks will pass 4 billion emails mark of addresses that are hacked email. If you think that the world wide web has about 3.2 users that means about one and a bit email addresses per user. As you can see the hacked emails listed is now 3.9 billion.

 

 

With the recent hack of the Swedish goverment will certainly add another few million to the list as it looks like almost everyone in Sweden accounts were hacked.

To test to see if you are hacked go to Haveibeenpwned.com, enter your and some of your closest friends and relatives e-mail address. Then click the “pwned?” button to the right. Your email will be checked to see if it is on the list. Check as many as you want, then notify them if they have been hacked. As a tip make sure that they do something,

If it says an email account has been hacked, change the password of the site immediately. Here are some passwords to avoid.

What does Google know about you

POS SOFTWARE

 We take our client's privacy very seriously. Now others do too. Google, however, is an advertising company which wears several hats. You are important to it both as a client and as a receiver of advertising. Now if you want to know what information Google has about you.

Go log into your Google account and export a copy of your information.

 

You probably like me will be stunned just how much they have on you.

393 million email addresses found on a spammers list.

POS SOFTWARE

Recently as a public service, I passed on a warning of a Data Breach and a possible Data Breach in our market space, well today. I got word of details on the inner workings of a massive, illegal spam operation. It was mind-blowing as it involves almost 400 million email addresses. With the numbers that high, the chances are good that you, or at least someone you know, is affected. 

If you have done what we suggested and signed up for its free alert service on this site here you would have been warned.

I think it's important to register yourself as we have seen recently a number of big attacks by hackers, some of which are the world's best-known websites like Linkedin, Adobe and Yahoo which you would think are safe and you cannot be too careful.

It is easy to use; you just type in your email address for your email addresses and you will get an instant result. At the same time, I would suggest that you check your family members accounts too. You never know.

Warning a data breach

POS SOFTWARE

Warning its just been announced that a website linked to Tower systems has been hacked again. Although its annouced the problem has been fixed on the website, if you have or had an account on their website, I strongly suggest that you review your passwords there. The question you need to ask yourself now is have you used these details on other sites? If so, it is possible that a hacker now has your account name and password on these websites. This information is the main reason for such website hacks as the average person, has about five passwords to make it easy for them to remember. A skilled hacker knows this sh they will immediately test this information on such sites as paypal, Amazon, Coles, common web based email and others. If they get in; it can be a big problem.

Although I doubt that this site will register the data breach formally, as many don't, still one site, I do recommend you go to, to test your email, and your common account login is here.

Enter in your common usernames and email accounts and see if anything has come up. Now register yourself to get warning if something comes up.

Now if you want to see for yourself hacking being done in real-time, a large computer company Norse which owns throughout the world thousands of data centres monitors many of the hacking attacks that come into its system, by location, severity and types. As numbers, it is not particularly interesting but what they have done is turned it into a memorising animated coloured shooting arrows that cross a map of the world. You can get a feel of just how big this hacking is right now. It's a war and its simply amazing to watch. Just remember this is only the information from one company; you can multiplied it by a million times more. Hacking is a multi billion dollar industry today. You can see attacks from one country to another.
 

Check it out at this site

http://map.norsecorp.com/#/

To see it for yourself, you will be amazed.

More ransomware attacks on POS Systems

POS SOFTWARE

You switch on your computer expecting to see your normal screen instead, you suddenly see this demanding you pay to an unknown person money otherwise everything on your computer will be lost, welcome to ransomware.

 

 

Everyday at least, one of my clients is reporting that they have been attacked. Some we managed to save, but some not. At the moment, its going viral and there is not a cure partly as there are different types of ransomware. The concept is that they prevent you from using your computers and demand you do something generally but not always that you pay them money (a “ransom”) before your computer works. Usually, this is about $700 although one of our clients got a demand for $5000.

I have heard of them hitting home systems retail shops, police stations, government agencies and doctors.

Generally, it is spread by spam in emails. A woman signed up with AGL, a few days later before the switch was done, this email arrives.

 

 

 

 

 

She presses the button, and she got hit by ransomware.

A similar story occurred to one of our clients who has an Australian Post dealership. He received an email from Australia Post. Nothing looked wrong, so he pressed it, and he got ransomware too.

What can be done?

Unlike many other viruses as ransomware is fairly new, and as I stated no-one has really got a full solution, although being careful and having a properly maintained antivirus software is a good start.

As a tip if you use a service such as gmail or hotmail and something does not look right put the suspicious email aside for a day. Google and Microsoft have a very active program in viruses and often they will catch it.

A new tool from BitDefender is worth knowing about. It works by tricking many ransomware software into thinking that your computer is already infected so the ransomware stops working.

 

It's completely free. 

The very best defence and the only one that works 100% is having an image backup that's not connected to your machine in any way. There are many online backup services available to do this, if you find one, you like, please let me know.

If you want to do it manually you will need a portable hard drive, make sure it's fast otherwise it can be very slow and some software, the one I recommend is Aomeitech

which has a standard version that is free, and you can find it there. This is what I use.

 

Should you pay???

That is a difficult question, by paying you are contributing to the spread of ransomware by providing a reward to these people. Another point to remember that once you are identified as a person willing to pay ransoms, you may be targeted more often. Lastly often people that pay are not given the rights to unlock their machine - they have paid for nothing.

Another issue is that often ransomware will imbed itself on your computer and will strike again later. Any computer hit with ransomware must be totally reformed.
 

This is how to stop Windows 10 annoying you.

POS SOFTWARE

Currently, I estimate that about 20% of our sites are at the moment on Windows 10. Many are now intending to upgrade to Windows 10 shortly. No surprises there its a fine operating system but be warned there will be trouble, but it's probably worth it. If you are going to do it, I will give up one tip, uninstall your virus protector do the Windows 10 upgrades and then reinstall your favourite virus protector, although I do admit that the free Windows Defender supplied by Microsoft is a good product, and as it is part of Windows has much less of an impact on speed, compared to many other products.

What is happening in many sites is that your computer keeps bugging you to update to windows 10! The other problem is that there are reports that some who never decided to go to Windows 10, but the computer did the upgrade anyway. So some people are claiming that Windows 10 is a *Mandatory* optional update. Another scenario which I think is more likely is some people got up in the morning, switched on their computer, which asked them a few questions and without them realising the significance of what they are doing, off the computer started on the Windows 10 upgrades, by then its too late to do anything. Lucky for these people, unlike many other point of sale providers our users do have 24-hour support that can do something about Windows 10 upgrade problems after hours.

Anyway despite Microsoft claims that there is no risk as you can go back to the old version of Windows if you do not like Windows 10, there is now a new "massive upgrade" (Version 1511), which once installed means you can no longer go back to Windows 7 or 8.1.

Now if you are one of these people that do not yet want to do a Windows upgrade, and you are on Windows 7 or 8, there is a simple way to stop this constant nagging by windows to upgrade and to stop your computer quietly in the background downloading the Windows 10 upgrades which is not small, it's about 3 GB.

The way I suggest you do it is go to this site

Select GWX Control Panel which is a free program that runs on Windows 7 and 8. Once you run it, it will stop the constant nagging to upgrade to Windows 10, it will prevent you from downloading the version 10 installer files and it hides the "Get Windows 10" icon from the status bar too.

How long does it take to do an cloud backup

POS SOFTWARE

Firstly, you need to get an approximate estimate of your upload speed by using a testing site such testmy, ozspeedtest or mybroadband.

Now you need to know the size of file something you should be able to get from windows explorer.

I went to this site here and got some approximate speed estimate.

Here are my results for:

1 Gigabyte file on a 1. 544Mbps takes one Hr 32 minutes.

3 Gigabyte file on a 1. 544Mbps takes 4 hours 38 minutes.

5 Gigabyte file on a 1. 544Mbps takes 7 hours 43 minutes.

This is why few people wait for a backup to be done if they use cloud. What they do is set it up and go home.

 

If you are at say 1Mbps just add another 1/3 to these figures or get your own figures.

However, this should be considered to being an ideal figure as there are still other several factors to consider.

The speed of your Internet will vary greatly, and so these speeds are only a rough guide. They also do not take into account overhead; your system does not only transmit your file but also checking information to verify the line so you can add another 15%.

The more files you are backing up, the longer preparation time that is required for each one. One point one of my competitors has not picked up on is that they are backing up too many files so slowing down the backup unnecessarily.

Few people can afford high-grade commercial on the Internet because of the cost which was something that Turnbull correctly pointed out was a fraud in the proposed NBN in the debate during the last election. As such your backup over the hours will probably be interrupted and will need to resume. This will slow you down more. It will also give you misleading figures as most backup software says it's six hours the backup. It will start 10 minutes of six hours, then 15 minutes of six hours and so on, but if it falls over say after two hours, it now needs four hours more to complete and shows 10 minutes of 4 hours, then 15 minutes of 4 hours and so on. If it fell over after another 30 minutes, it would now start to show 10 minutes of 3.5 hours, then 15 minutes of 3.5 hours and so on. If you looked at it, then you would think it was only 3.5 hours to do the backup. I have had people fooled by that.

Furthermore, your Internet speed varies greatly depending how many people are using it at that exact time, sometimes they drop to a small percentage of their rated speed. For example, in my area at home the Internet speed at 6:00pm goes right down and does not shots up again until about 1:00am. Then I get a good speed until about 8:00am.

If your computer or networks are being used by other processes, the backup time will be increased. Many people have their computers doing anti-virus sweeps, communication between them and suppliers, program updates, etc.

Lastly and this cannot be stressed too highly many cloud backup solutions, have limits and slow down your backups if you back up too much in a month. They may say that give you 30 GB but in practice, it is so slow that it is unusable. You need to check this before deciding on a cloud backup.

Cloud backup automation

POS SOFTWARE

Many people today want to backup to the cloud.

The problem is that with the growing amount of information being created now everyday, its getting harder to store an emergency copy of their information. The problem of course is if they lose this information, they have no business.

There are several advantages to using cloud. The one I like most is that it can be done by an automatic “set and forget it” model so resulting in less operational and administrative management for data backup. I no longer have the problem of everyday going home with a tape.

Users of ours have two main alternatives for cloud, and I am not recommending either until our current trials are completed. The first is to use a commercial company like Microsoft onedrive which is $2/month,
There are of course many other excellent providers of cloud backup too that our clients use.

The other solution is to create your own cloud of which several good programs allow you to do. Two that I recommend you look at are.

goodsync

and

allwaysync

Both solutions automatically, whenever a file change in your backup directory put a copy of that file in a safe location which can be a wide range of devices.

Now when I come home from work, every evening I have the latest copy plus old copies of my information waiting for me.

 

Our smart software means Life is BETTER :-)

Run sheets on iPods

POS SOFTWARE

[link removed]

My wife went for a run, with her iPod. I suddenly realized that for many people who deliver newspapers and magazines in the morning walking, an iPod might be a great solution as it is very light, easy to use, and reliable.

Not only could it carry run sheets, but it could also play stereo music while you work.

You would print out the run sheet as a PDF or load the text file into Word. Then save it as either a PDF or a Word document. Then load it into an iPod.

If anyone tries this, please let me know how it goes.

Selling a business and the value of the software

POS SOFTWARE

I was reading an article by one of my competitors.

As I understand it, the software that you sell, if it is up-to-date, is worth, with no data, the current buy price. Of course, this is a real problem for people on the DOS system since the buy price has dropped dramatically in the past few years, resulting in some bad valuations for this item.

However, the data the Newsagency has put into it should add to a value. Ten (10) years of data should be worth something. The business brokers should address this point.

In the real world, say you sell a newsagency. At the sale time, you will have to sign many documents. Some of these include a statement that what you sell is in working order and fit to run a newsagency. If you think of it, someone would be crazy to buy something as expensive as a newsagency without such documents. But even if they did miss it, there are consumer affairs laws, federal and state, that deal with implied warranties. This means that a sold newsagency carries with it a legal obligation that the items sold are in working order and that it can do the job! Now

1) If the data is garbage, then it is fraud. The seller could find himself having to pay the cost of fixing the data. This has happened, and the seller had to reimburse the buyer for the cost of fixing up the data by a computer consultant and the time of the buyer's accountant.

2) We also had a seller with an old software version. After selling his Newsagency, the buyer stated that after talking to a few newsagent’s suppliers, the software lacks functions that a reasonable person in a Newsagency should expect. To her, it was not working. Armed with a few statements from these Newsagency suppliers, she went off to a lawyer. The seller made a deal and paid for the upgrade from an old Newsagency system to the recent version.

I suggest anyone considering selling a Newsagency with a computer discuss these two points with the business agent and how they should approach it.