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HI-TECH TALK Newsletter: May 2001 Newsletter Index
Thanks for completing the survey Thanks to everyone who completed and sent in the survey from the January newsletter. Congratulations to Megan and Deanna of Mowry U-Stor in Fremont Cal., winners of the Free Tech Support for a Year drawing! If you have not yet completed the
survey, we would still like to receive one from you. HI-TECH Spring Seminars—Sign up today! Saturday, June 9:
Biloxi, Mississippi HI-TECH will be offering
one-day Education Seminars June 9th, 11th, and 12th. The seminars, for customers of HI-TECH, will focus on the
setup and daily use of RentPlus. Additional topics, including RentPlus for
Multiple-Site Operations and conversion from Mini-StoragePlus to RentPlus,
will also be offered. The seminars are designed for anyone using or
considering RentPlus, including both owners and managers. Use the enclosed
registration form to sign up today or call 800-551-8324 or visit our web
site (www.hitechsoftware.com). Please register by May 30, 2001. HI-TECH
to Launch E-Business: BackupForBusiness.com
Backing up your
data is one of the most critical functions you must do, and disk and tape
backups are not always reliable: disks and tapes wear out, get lost, and are
difficult to verify and test. Sometimes (we all know!), they just don’t
get done! With
BackupForBusiness.com, your files are automatically backed up every day, and
you have verification that the files you need are being backed up. You can use your
unique login name and password to access our secure servers to retrieve
files whenever they are needed. You may also backup additional files on
demand, review a log of all of the backup and retrieve events and delete
older files. Account owners may add and delete logins and passwords for
employees who need access to the site. Additional services
provide e-mail notification for most activities, such as successful backups,
file retrievals, or files deleted. Deleted files are usually held in the
‘recycle bin’ for a few days in case you find you need them after all.
Older files can be automatically deleted when space is needed, freeing you
up from manually managing the data on your site. You can also mark selected
files as ‘protected’ which prevents them from ever being deleted
automatically. Is my data secure? The security of your data
is the principal focus of BackupForBusiness.com. A number of different
levels of security protection are in place to keep your data safe: · The data is kept on a secure, dedicated server located in a secure data center hosted by one of the world’s foremost web hosting companies. ·
SSL (a premier Internet
security feature) is in place to encrypt your data as it is uploaded or
downloaded. ·
Only you and the
employees you have assigned passwords to have access to the data, and
employees can be restricted in what they are allowed to do. ·
As files are uploaded to
our secure servers, they are scanned for viruses using Norton Anti-virus. ·
A firewall protects the
web site from unauthorized entry. ·
Your data is actually
stored on two disk drives—one is a ’mirror’ of the other, so if one
drive crashes, the other will automatically be available to you.
·
Data is backed up to tape
every week. Do I need a high-speed
Internet connection? If you have a large
amount of data to backup, then a fast connection—DSL, ISDN, Cable—is
definitely recommended. A dial-up connection will work but is best used for
sites with smaller data files. How much does it cost? Costs vary depending on
the amount of data and the number of sites you plan on signing up. A typical
single-site system will cost only about $30/month. More information… Top New
Late Law for California—Update As
covered in our January 2001 newsletter, RentPlus has a special feature for
handling the new California late law that went into effect on January 1st,
2001. When
you setup this feature in RentPlus, be sure to set the minimum late charge
amount to $20 (not $10). The
special California settings take precedence, so the actual late charges
charged to customers could still be as low as $10. Setting this to $20 will
ensure that the calculation of late fees at all levels is accurate.
Featured Product—RentPlus Multi-User (Network) Edition The
RentPlus Multiple-User option allows you to have multiple users (computers)
share and use the same RentPlus data at the same time. Each user runs a copy
of RentPlus on their workstation and accesses the data stored on another
computer on the network. Why
get this option? In a nutshell, service.
Multiple users allows your staff to take care of more than one customer at a
time, or to avoid tieing up your only system while you run reports or
perform accounting tasks such as check-writing. Your customers will greatly
appreciate this capability! The
server can be a dedicated server or a workstation on the network. For best
performance results, a dedicated server should be used. “Dedicated” does
not mean that nothing else can be running on the server. For example the
server may be running other software such as Microsoft Back Office.
“Dedicated” in this sense means that no one is using that computer as a
workstation. Once
you have your network up and running, setting up RentPlus Multi-User is
easy: Install RentPlus on each of the workstations that will be running the
software. Copy the RentPlus data file to the system that will be the server.
Link each of the RentPlus systems to the data on the server. When
things are all set up, you simply start RentPlus on each of the
workstations, select the linked data file, and begin. Each workstation can
take payments, move customers in and out, run reports, etc. If you have
features installed such as the Access Control Interface or Automatic Credit
Card Processing you can configure your system to do these tasks only through
one workstation and the information generated on the other workstations will
carry through. Printers, including the 40-column receipt printer, can be
shared by the workstations. It
is also possible to setup a workstation as a remote workstation,
connecting to your site over the Internet. To do this you must have
pcANYWHERE software and a high-speed (DSL, ISDN, Cable) connection to the
Internet (in the main office and also at the remote site). It is slightly
slower than using a system over a local area network; however, since
processing is done in the main system, the wait time is quite minimal. It is
also possible to do this using Windows 2000 Terminal Server. Top RentPlus Version 1.6
New Feature: When
you are viewing information in a folder, such as customers, prospects, sales
orders, etc., you can choose to hide or to show older (inactive)
information. With
the folder displayed on screen, click the View menu (see illustration), The
following chart explains what is considered inactive for each folder.
Folders not listed do not have any active/inactive filter.
You must be careful to use the backup utility
that is best for your system: Single-Computer
Systems ·
If you use the backup
utility from the RentPlus Launch screen (when you first startup RentPlus),
then only the highlighted data file is backed up. Multi-User
systems RentPlus TechTips:
Optimizing RentPlus and Data It
is very important to regularly
run the Optimize option in RentPlus. Once a week or more frequently is
recommended. Optimizing removes temporary files that have been created,
shrinking the size of the program and data. Optimizing also tests the
integrity of the data file and will attempt to repair any errors that are
found. To optimize, start RentPlus. The RentPlus launch program is displayed. First highlight “RentPlus Data”, then click Optimize. When done, highlight “RentPlus Program”, then click Optimize. Each step will take only a few minutes. If you have multiple data files, each data file should be optimized in turn. You can also optimize the practice database if you like. IMPORTANT:
If during or after optimizing you receive
an error message, do NOT continue to use the software without dealing with
this problem. Instead, contact HI-TECH technical support right away
(support@hitechsoftware.com).
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