Have You Got Something to Sell?

I've been doing some research on online shopping carts and putting together or maintaining an online store.  Even though I've done some websites in the past, that is one thing that I've never had occasion to learn about or do anything with.

From the research I've done, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out.  There are quite a few services out there, so the hard part is choosing between them.  Thankfully most of them offer a free trial, so it would be easy to try them out before making any kind of commitment or paying any fees.

It looks like, besides offering the shopping cart software, they provide a complete online store builder with everything from professional templates to make your store look great to customer registration and login.  And if you don't know anything about technology, they have experts to help you get everything set up and ready to go - so you can start selling whatever it is you're selling in no time.  What that means to me is that I wouldn't have to figure it all out for myself.  I could do what I know how to do and leave the details about how an online store works to the experts.

If you've got something to sell, what that means for you is that you can concentrate on your products and services while your online store brings in the customers and sales. There are different packages to choose from, so you can choose the right one for your products and needs, and upgrading is simple if or when your needs change.  And somebody is always there to answer your questions or help you out with the details.

Get PagePlus Essentials Free from Amazon

Amazon.com is offering PagePlus Essentials as a free software download.

Product description from Amazon:

PagePlus Essentials makes it a breeze to design and print stunning projects like cards, posters, newsletters and more with its amazing combination of powerful and easy-to-use desktop publishing features. It’s so easy to go from a blank page to a fantastic design just by dragging and dropping whatever you want onto your page – it’s that simple! On-screen ‘How To’ guides can walk you through tasks step-by-step, while the handy Learning Zone contains videos and tutorials as well as access to the community forums and the extensive knowledge base – help is never far away. The professionally-designed, customizable templates in PagePlus Essentials are a great way to produce amazing documents in no time at all – just add your own pictures and words for a polished document in minutes. You also get fabulous effects and instant styles to make your words and logos stand out from the page. Impressive text handling is at the very heart of PagePlus Essentials. You will recognize all the usual writing and formatting controls from a word-processor plus fast-flowing text wraps, customizable paragraph and character styles and the freedom to write text and place objects exactly where you want. It really does have everything you need to create impressive documents. A built-in PhotoLab offers over 70 adjustments, corrections, filters and effects to turn your images into works of art. With the dedicated Image Cutout Studio you can remove photo backgrounds quickly – you don’t even need a steady hand. PagePlus Essentials also supports more than 25 popular image file types so it’s a safe bet that you will be able to use any picture you can get your hands on. After you have finished designing, you can share your projects with friends and family quickly and easily by publishing documents as PDFs that can be viewed and printed on other computers. This powerful and flexible program is indispensable to anyone who creates or designs documents on a computer.

If you need publishing and design software, give it a try. You can't beat the price!

Good Deal on Sony Vegas

Cory has been wanting Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack for a while now. I found it today at Buy.com on sale for $89.99 with a $30 rebate, which is the best price we've seen so far - so I grabbed it. If you're looking for some good movie editing software, this is supposed to be really good.

I'm linking to this here, because searching for Sony Vegas on Buy.com doesn't bring this page up. Instead you get the software for $90-something with no rebate mentioned. I checked Pricegrabber to find the best price, and when I clicked the Buy.com link there, it got me this page with the sale and rebate. It's only good this week, so grab it now if you want it.

beethov9.wma Is All Kinds of Problem

Earlier this week I was helping a friend of mine upgrade Windows XP to SP3. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but for some reason these Service Pack upgrades always seem to have their issues. I put off installing it on my own computer for a long time, and then when I finally did it - BSOD! - which led to having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows completely.

This time things seemed to be going well. We backed up all the documents on the computer and began the install, which of course takes forever because Windows has to back everything up, just in case you need to go back to SP2. So, all the files are backed up, the install of SP3 begins, and partway through there's an error copying beethov9.wma - do we want to continue the install without copying it? Click yes and the install continues, until we get another error message telling us the same exact file cannot be copied. After multiple retries we hit cancel, which does not just cancel copying that file - it cancels the entire upgrade. That means everything that had been installed is uninstalled and all the backups are restored. And we went through this multiple times - first deleting the file because we thought it was a random file that was already on the computer. That didn't work so I tried downloading SP3 from Microsoft again, thinking maybe there was a problem with the file I had previously downloaded - except that one had worked just fine when I installed it on my computer - the 2nd time, after I had reformatted and re-installed.

Midway through the 3rd attempt, this storm rolled through, and I held my breath hoping the power wouldn't go out. It did flicker a few times, but thankfully we had the computer plugged into a battery backup. I still got the beethov9.wma error, but at least the install wasn't interrupted, and I didn't lose everything. That's when Mary Googled "beethov9.wma" to see if there was any info. Sure enough, we weren't the only ones having this problem. Basically, Windows was trying to copy this file into the Shared Documents folder - except that on this particular computer that folder had never been shared. It was just called Documents, and every time we tried to open it, we got an error message saying we didn't have permission to access that folder.

To fix this I right-clicked on the folder and chose 'Sharing and Security' (you can also choose Properties and go to the Sharing tab) - then I checked the boxes to share the folder on a network and allow users to change my files.

Reading the box, it looks like the Shared Documents folder was already supposed to be there and be shared with all users on the computer, but for some reason it wasn't. I ended up having to run the Network Setup Wizard first so that I could check those boxes, but the end result was that, after sharing the folder, the file did indeed copy, and the installation of SP3 was successful. Finally!

My question for Microsoft is - why does an update to my operating system that contains 'security updates, hotfixes, and select out-of-band releases' also need a music file? I'm pretty sure the computer would have operated just fine without it - and saved me a lot of frustration. A job that should have taken a couple hours ended up taking ALL DAY.

Advanced System Care

Probably because of the recent virus that installed itself on my computer, I noticed a link on Giveaway of the Day I hadn't noticed before. It says that Giveaway of the day is adware/spyware free, and if you want to check that for yourself they recommend - Advanced System Care - both free and pro versions are available.

It's supposed to prevent spyware, hackers and hijackers from installing malicious items on your computer and scan and remove any that are already on there. Besides that, Advanced System Care has a whole lot of other tools that are supposed to make your computer run better, and it's supposed to be really easy to use.

I haven't tried it yet. First I'll be reading the user reviews. The ones I've read so far are really positive. Have any of you tried this? What do you think? Good? Bad? The best thing since sliced bread?

Leave My Computer Alone!

I left my computer alone for a few minutes last night and came back to find a mess. It's not like I've never left it alone before. I thought I could trust it!

My brother left a comment saying he had a similar problem recently. He downloaded a program called Malwarebytes, and that took care of his problem. So, I tried it. I downloaded the free version, installed, and attempted a scan. My computer shut down before the scan could complete.

Luckily, I had recently downloaded a program called WinUtilities from Giveaway of the Day. It has a tool to manage the startup files on your computer, so I looked through those and found something called prunnet.exe. That was the culprit, as well as some kind of advertising service that had installed itself. I couldn't just delete the file because it was running, but by disabling it in the startup files and then restarting my computer, I think I kept it from starting. Then I browsed to the file (in Windows/system32) and deleted it. I also selected all other files there that had been created at the same time, and by right-clicking them, I could scan just those files with Malwarebytes. It found the bad files and removed them. I also used Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the advertising 'service' that had placed itself on my computer.

Now, I'm crossing my fingers that it all worked. So far so good - no more annoying popups. Still, I'm irritated that people do these kinds of things. Don't they have better things to do with their lives? Thank you to the creators of Malwarebytes - I'm thankful you chose to use your powers for good. The rest of you - leave my computer alone!

DVD Copy Software

I was reading the comments for today's Giveaway of the Day, which is a DVD copy program. There was a lot of discussion about the legalities and illegalities of copying DVDs. However, I believe that, if I have a copy of a movie on DVD, then I should have the right to make a backup copy of it. Disney has a program that lets you register your DVDs, so that, if anything happens to them, you can get a replacement, for a nominal fee of $6.95. It's not free, but it is cheaper than you can usually go out and buy the DVD in the store. I don't know that any other DVDs can be registered and protected that way, so having a backup seems to be a very good idea. We already do it with all of our music CDs so we don't have to carry the originals in the car.

In the comments on the Giveaway of the Day program, several people mentioned DVDFab as good DVD Copy software that is always available for free. So, if you miss today's Giveaway of the Day, and you have some DVDs you'd like to backup, you can try this. I think I'm going to try the one from Giveaway of the Day, just because today is the only day I can get it for free. If I don't like it, I can always go back and and download DVDFab.

Giveaway of the Day

This is one of those sites I wish someone had told me about sooner. Every day they give away software - for FREE. The software is available for download for 24 hours, and that software is absolutely free. That means - not a trial, not a limited version - but a registered and legal version of the software, free for their visitors. The software has to be downloaded, installed and registered that same day, and there are no upgrades and no technical support.

One of the most helpful things about the site is that people who have already downloaded and installed the program can leave their comments and rate it. Often someone will leave a link to another similar program - usually also free - that they feel does a better job than the one currently being offered by Giveaway of the Day. So sometimes, instead of downloading and installing a program that I might need someday, I bookmark the other ones so I can find them if I ever need them. Also, be sure to read the 15 minute review by Bladed Thoth. He gives a more in-depth review of how the program works, if it works, etc. Very helpful.

I have added a ticker from Giveaway of the Day to my sidebar. Each day it shows the software that is available for FREE, and how long you have left to download and install it. If you see something that sounds interesting, just click and check it out.

And, if you're into games, you'll also want to check out the Game Giveaway of the Day.