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News
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
- We have a new office location in
Cottageville South Carolina. We are having new phone lines
installed and will let everyone know the new numbers. We will be
working from both our Summerville and Cottageville offices as
needed. You can always reach us on our cell phones in an
emergency. Sue 843-708-8103, Rick 843-708-8102
Net Watch
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] This is an
urgent Net Watch article. There have been some real changes
in the way that Visa and Master Card expect web vendors to accept
credit cards. In an effort to curb on-line fraud they now
require all web orders to be processed in real time.
It used to be easy to simply have
your orders e-mailed to you for you to process with your in-house
merchant account. Well no more. If Visa or Maser Card
find that you are processing orders in this manner, they will no
longer allow you to process cards.
The solution is to move to real
time processing. We have been working with a merchant
account company to bring our clients the easiest possible road to
compliance with the new rules. I wish that I could say
things have gone totally smooth, but there have been some bumps in
the road. We were hoping to have everything up and going by
the release of this article, but there are a few bugs we are still
working out. Once we are done, we will be able to transition
any of our current clients directly to this new system.
Here is the basic breakdown of how
most people used to do things. They had a web site that sold
products. When someone would order products, they would
receive an email and then process the information through their
in-house terminal and ship out the products. This new system works
differently in that the process is handled all automatically, in
real time. The customer selects the products, chooses
checkout from the shopping cart screen and after filling out all
the necessary contact and credit card fields, the information is
passed directly to a “gateway.” The “gateway” connects directly to
the merchant account processor, verifies the charges, and
completes the sale.
Of course there are charges for the
gateway services, about $30 to $50 per month as well as a one time
setup fee of around $300 to $500 depending on the provider. There
is a benefit however. Most transactions that are not swiped
at the register are considered “phone orders” and the vendor is
charged a much higher rate, as much as 3.25% or more. By
setting up a real time system a vendor can get the rate down to
2.5% (with approval from the processor). This change can
mean big savings for a high volume site.
The bottom line is that web sites
that want to take credit card orders will have to comply to the
new rules or risk being banned from taking credit cards. Our
hope is to make the process as inexpensive and pain free as
possible. Once we have all the bugs worked out, and all the
numbers together, we will issue a special notice with all the
details. You can always give us a call if you have any
specific questions.
There is a “free” way to take
credit cards in real time. Many have heard of PayPal, a very
popular on-line service used primarily by EBay users. They
will give you a free account, and provide a secure gateway, but
you will have to pay 3% per transaction. Your customers will
also have to fill out forms twice. Once on your page and
once on there page as verification. If you are just starting
out, or your site sells a single item, this may be the best answer
for you. Please visit
http://www.teklowe.com/Balusters_Mediterranean.htm as an
example of how this works for a single item. This bypasses a
shopping cart and goes directly to a page where your customers
picks the quantity and fills out the necessary information to
complete the sale. If you currently have a shopping cart please
visit
http://www.carolinesandlin.com for an example of an integrated
shopping cart connected to PayPal. Currently we can
transition any of our merchant sites to PayPal for real-time
processing.
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Product Review
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
Apple iBook Product Review Part 1
Have you all seen the ads? I
mean, does Apple really expect to convince us to switch to Apple
computers? No, I don’t think so either. I’d sure like
to know what they paid those people though. If the price
were right, I might consider switching! Anyway, enough
poking fun at Apple. Recently, I needed to purchase a
Macintosh computer. Since our business is Web Page Design
and marketing, and 4 to 5 percent of web traffic is from Apple
based systems, I thought it would be wise to make sure that things
worked and looked right across all platforms.
 So I went
to Apple’s web site to look for a “bargain.” I surely don’t
want to shell out a bunch of cash for something that I’m not going
to use everyday, but if I was buying something for work, I wanted
it to be current technology. I decided to get an iBook.
The model I wanted was over $1300, so I decided to see if they had
any refurbished products. To my great delight, they had the
model I wanted for only $999.00. It is just up from the
basic unit, as it has a 20 gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW, 128 megs of
ram, and a 12” screen.
Before I get into the real meat of
this review, let me briefly explain my relationship with the Apple
computers. I’ve had several older models over the years.
They’ve always seemed very exclusive in operation and
compatibility. I was never really impressed with there
usability or stability either, and found them just arduous.
There seems to have been a shift in
both the Windows and Macintosh platforms. The same complaint
regarding stability with Windows was basically resolved with
Windows XP. Apple’s woes have been solved with their new
operating system OS X. My other complaints of exclusivity
have also been greatly addressed with the new update to OS X
called Jaguar. Not only is my little iBook stable while
doing several things, it connected seamlessly with my Windows Peer
to Peer network and I was able to retrieve files from my shared
volume on my Windows XP desktop. I even opened and used Word
XP files, Excel XP files as well as moved all my MP3s so that I
can use iTunes. I’ve even plugged in my USB Logitech mouse,
Maxtor External 40 Gig Hard Drive, and Olympus Digital Camera and
everything worked great.
So what about the speed and
hardware? The speed is a little pokey, but it is only a 700MHz
processor and all my other computers are 1.5GHz or better so I’m
sure that it is relative. It keeps up ok. I’m sure
that another 128 megs or more of RAM would make a big difference.
The physical look of the hardware
is beyond elegant. From my perspective, Apple has always
been more about look than function. With this product they
have achieved both in my opinion. There are a few things
that I’m not thrilled with. The 12’ screen is just too small for
1024x768 resolution, yet all the applications need to be run at
that resolution. AND WHERE IS THE RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON????
I mean come on. How hard is it to add a second button to the
touchpad? When my mouse was plugged in, OS X used my right
mouse button. Why don’t they add one to the built in
touchpad. And all that elegance comes at a price. When
you consider the Toshiba I just bought had a bigger hard drive,
15” screen, floppy, was more than twice as fast, had twice the
ram, all for the same price, my choice is still to stick with the
PC.
My final opinion is that Apple has
come a long way in making their products more globally friendly.
They’ve always been the “snobs” of the computer world not wanting
to share their toys or play with others. Now that seems to
have changed. I really like this little notebook and would
not hesitate to recommend it to someone that just wanted a simple
computer to surf the web, send emails, write letters, etc. I
may even recommend it over a PC just because it is so small,
light, easy to use, and has a great battery. But for me it
is just another tool in my toolbox. I’m in the process of
using it for some video editing, photo, and audio needs.
I’ll compare it to doing the work on a PC in next month’s product
review.
Please send any questions about, or
ideas for product reviews to
Staff@dogriverdesign.com.
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