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| pcAmerica Newsletter #135-July 19 2005 |
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This Week: Catarina One Stop Catarina One Stop Computerizes 20,000 Square Foot State of the Art Facility with Cash Register Express. “Cash Register Express Is The Best We’ve Seen.” According to Bobby, the convenience store is far more. It is a country store that sells just about everything, from shovels to soda, and from oil to donuts.
Catarina One Stop is located in … Catarina, Texas in the Laredo area. The actual town of Catarina has a population of 135 according to the latest census. The business is located right off the highway and attracts loyal customers from all of the area. For more information on Catarina, please go to : http://www.texasescapes.com/SouthTexasTowns/Catarina-Texas.htm If you go to the above site, be sure to click on the Asherton and the Laredo link. Become a pcAmerica Reference If you would like your business highlighted in our newsletter, please email to We just need a couple of photos and some information about your business. Your business will also be listed on our web site. Comments or Ideas If you have any comments or ideas you would like to share with our readers, please write to pcAmerica Tidbit Dell Laserjet Printer Now $99. Go here for details: http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/print_1100?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd Now, we are not recommending this printer or any other printer at this time. We just wanted to discuss it. Many retail stores print lots of reports in Black and White. Most Laser Printers have acceptable print quality for printing business reports. The Dell Printer seems like a steal. Only $99. However, look at the cost of the cartridges. The Dell Printer Cartridge for the above model costs $65 for 2,000 pages of printing (according to Dell). That’s about 3 1/4 cents per page. An HP Laserjet Printer that sells for about $500 has print cartridges (faster and superior printing) that sell for about 1 1/2 cents per page. Buying the more expensive HP Laserjet will save you about 1 3/4 cents per page. If you print 500 pages per month (average of retail store), you can save $10 per month on an HP or about $360 over a three year period of time. HP Cartridges are available at your local office supply store. Dell Cartridges must be purchased online and shipped. Before deciding on a printer, you should look at your usage, the speed of the printer, quality of the output, the initial price, and the price per page for buying replacement cartridges. With lower per page costs in mind, HP has recently come out with brand new printers that lower the per page costs of printing. Gift Card Loyalty Card Update The Article Below Was Originally Published in August, 2003. We have recently received several requests to reprint it. So here it is. pcAmerica no longer prints gift or loyalty cards (those cards that look like Credit Cards). However, our software fully supports gift and loyalty cards and it is a great feature used by many of our customers. We now send our customers to Plasticard Plus for Loyalty Card. They are very artistic, fast, and cost effective. If you need to print loyalty cards, call your account manager for Plasticard Plus contact information. (Originally published August, 2003) Many stores, such as Staples have started to use a unique gift card idea. When you purchase one of many products from Staples, you are given a gift card for a future purchase on a future day. For example, if you purchase a $649 HP 2300 Laser Jet Printer, you are given a coupon to mail back to Staples. When Staples receives the coupon, they send the buyer a $65 Gift Card. The buyer can then use this gift card for any future purchases at Staples. I think it's a great concept. It's also a great way to get the name, address, and email address of your customers and get them back into your store. Your best customers are your present customers. This is just another way of getting your customers to return to your store sooner and more frequently. In addition, emails do work. I hope you like receiving our emails. Actually, it doesn't matter if you like it or not!!! 10% of you respond positively to our emails. That means more sales for us and more people remember who pcAmerica is. However, it also means that if you do it through CRE, you will also receive more sales, free marketing and advertising, and increased presence in your particular market. Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express accept Gift Cards and Refillable Cash Cards. Gift Cards and Refillable Cash Cards look like and feel like a credit card. They have your store name and logo on it along with a unique customer number on it (similar to a credit card number). You can purchase these cards for less than $1 each. Your customers purchase the cards from your store in $5, $10, $25, or any dollar amount you choose. You sell the card as you would sell any other item in your store. Your customer can come in at any time and refill the card. Your computer keeps track of the amount of money still available to the customer. Using the card is easy. You can use the same card swipe reader used for a credit card. When your customer makes a purchase, you swipe the card and the amount is deducted from the customer's account. The advantages to you... Customer loyalty. Your customer can only use the card at your store. Great replacement for gift certificates. Instead of having to handle gift certificates, your customers can give out loyalty cards. They are more flexible and easier to use than a gift certificate. Speed of checkout. Many stores sell these cards to speed up checkout. For example, a chain of coffee shops use the loyalty cards to speed up checkout. A customer purchases a $25 card, for example. Every time the customer comes in for coffee and a donut, the card is quickly swiped and the customer is done. No waiting for your customer to come up with change. No change to return to the customer. Everything is tracked using the customer number on the card. Whenever your customer makes a purchase, he receives a receipt letting him know his card balance. Customer Gift Cards and Loyalty Cards work. Ask Bed Bath & Beyond. #6 of 10 Essential Things You Must Know About Your Computer Buying A Computer We always get in trouble when we recommend computers. We especially hear from those smart people out there. I hate Dell. Why not recommend HP? I make my own computers in my basement… So, take what we say with a grain of salt. We have been in the computer business for 33 years now. Long enough to know nothing about them! With that said, Dell is our favorite computer (IBM is our favorite Laptop). They are low cost, easy to purchase, and highly rated by PC Magazine and PC World for performance and longevity. You can get a suitable Dell Computer WITH a flat screen monitor for less than $600 shipped to your house or business. If you like HP, Sony, Gateway, IBM, or any other name brand computer, go for it. If you have a local guru recommending something else, go for it. More important are the specifications. We recommend the following: Pentium 4 (not a Celeron). The prices are too close to save a few dollars on a Celeron. 2.8 GHz Processor. Any thing faster is overkill unless you know what GHz is!!! The higher the number, the better. Most “regular” users don’t need extra speed unless you feel like spending the extra money. 2.8 GHz is just fine. Anything over 2.0 GHz would be just fine, if you get a great bargain on it. 512 MB RAM. The price between 256 and 512 is too close to not spend the extra dollars to get 512. 1024 is even better, but not particularly necessary if you are pinching pennies. 40 GB Hard Drive. Any thing less is penny pinching. If you intend to store music or phones, get a larger Hard Drive. 40 GB is standard and fine for most businesses. A regular standard inexpensive CD Reader. You do not need a CD writer for backup. You should be using an external USB Hard Drive (see one of our previous newsletters). No reason to spend money on a CD writer unless you need to make copies of a CD for some reason. Windows XP Home (not Windows XP Professional). If you don’t know what XP Professional is, you don’t need it. Many computer manufacturers try to get you to purchase the Professional Version of Windows because they make more money on it. You don’t need it. The Home Edition works fine in most businesses. Microsoft probably calls it the “Home” edition to get you to upgrade. Don’t do it (unless you know what the Professional Edition is going to do for you). Almost all of our customers are using the Home Edition of Windows XP. Most computers come with a 10/100 Network Card, USB Ports, a Parallel Port and a Serial Port. Serial Ports are not used very much any more and some computers may not include one. That’s fine. Back to Newsletter Archive |
Robert L. Ramirez (Bobby) compared Cash Register Express to several other systems. According to Bobby, “Cash Register Express is the best we’ve seen.”’ Catarina One Stop is a 20,000 Square Foot State of the art building plus a 14 acre RV Park. The facility includes trailer rentals, convenience store, and fast food. 
According to Ramirez, CRE Is just so easy to use, easy to learn, and helps control inventory plus has all the functions necessary for his fast food operation. “We could not be happier and wish we had set up the program a long time ago. We were able to set up the entire program without outside help.”
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