Square, don’t know if I love you or hate you. No question I hate the way you were all over the place hyping up something that didn’t exist (and the way the media helped you do that).

Anyway, 6 months after we signed up, 12 months after we expressed interest, we have our first Square-up reader. A lot of their deal terms and pricing have changed over that time. Now they are looking like a moderately expensive credit card processor (they are called “merchants” in the industry for some crazy reason) with really cheap hardware (mostly because they piggy-back on the iPod/ iPhone/ iPad).

So what do we think? Well, it works, and relatively efficiently. Processing speed can be a bit slow. I think the reader looks flimsy and I’m waiting for it to break. But I love that I can take orders from an iPod (rather than have to put out for a $1,000 wireless reader that breaks every 2 months).