Rick's Daily Tips

Amazon Local Register – Accept credit card payments on your mobile device for just 1.75% per swipe!

Posted on August 14, 2014

amazon-local-register Accepting credit and debit cards is essential for most small businesses today, but purchasing a card swipe terminal and paying the sky-high processing fees are tough hurdles for many of them to get over.

But now a new service called Amazon Local Register makes it cheap and easy to accept card payments using an iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire or one of a number of select Android devices!

What’s more, the tiny secure card reader that Amazon will send you costs just $10 and you’ll even get that right back in the form of fee credits! The only other fee you’ll pay is a small “Swipe Fee” every time you swipe a customer’s credit or debit card. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it normal for Netflix to use almost all of my Internet download bandwidth?

Posted on August 13, 2014

Question from Heather E.: Hi Rick. I hope you can help me out with the answer to a question that’s been bugging me for a while.

The download speed for my Internet connection is supposed to be 30 Mbps. When I check it with Speedtest.net like you suggested in one of your previous posts, it almost always says it’s running around 28 Mbps. I can live with that.

But when my boyfriend is watching a movie on Netflix (he does it every night), Speedtest.net says I’m only getting around 6 Mbps. Is this normal? I know that Netflix uses a lot of bandwidth, but that seems excessive to me.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Review: Quantum View 10.1″ Tablet and Keyboard with Windows 8.1 & Office 2013

Posted on August 12, 2014

There are tons of tablets PCs on the market today, and most of them are running either Android or iOS. But the real computing power lies in Windows-based tablets.

While it’s true that most any tablet will work just fine if all you need to do is visit a website or two, send emails, play a simple game or peruse Facebook, you really need the power and flexibility of a full-blown computer if you plan to do any real work.

If you’re looking for a true workhorse of a tablet at a great price, I believe you’ll find that the Quantum View 10.1″ Tablet and Keyboard with Windows 8.1 & Office 2013 is an outstanding option. This awesome device offers much of the power and functionality of Microsoft’s Surface line of Windows tablets at less than half the cost. [Read more…]

Do you own a Vizio TV? If so, it might have just been recalled.

Posted on August 12, 2014

vizio-tv TV maker Vizio has just announced a massive recall of almost a quarter of a million of their TV sets. The reason? They have a tendency to fall over, potentially crushing whatever they happen to fall on.

If you own a Vizio TV, take heed (especially if you happen to have small children or pets).

If your TV is an E390-B0, E390i-B0, or E420i-B0, you might have one of the recalled models. If so, I strongly recommend that you contact Vizio and arrange to have your TV repaired at no cost to you. [Read more…]

Defraggler – A faster, better way to defrag your hard drive

Posted on August 11, 2014

defraggler When Microsoft Windows saves a file to the hard drive, it is often saved in fragments that are scattered all over the drive’s platters instead of as a single continuous, unbroken stream of ones and zeroes.

This process is called fragmentation, and over time a heavily fragmented drive can slow down your PC to a snail’s pace as the drive’s read/write heads must travel hither and yon to find all of a file’s pieces and patch them back together before the file can be used by the CPU.

Every version of Windows includes a “defragging” tool that can rearrange all the files on your hard drive into nice, fast loading contiguous chunks of code, often speeding up your system considerably in the process. But the defragger built into Windows has a huge drawback: it’s slow! [Read more…]