Bits & Bytes

By Joel B. Bernbaum, Esq.

Spring Cleaning

This is the time of the year I do a spring cleaning of my office and my apartment. I go through the piles of stuff I grew on my desk’s in/out boxes, my file drawers, and closets in my office. Boxes of old unwanted trash get taken to the dumpster or shredded. Scan any important or needed documents and make sure they are saved and filed correctly.

Inventory your furniture and furnishings to see if they need cleaning, repairing, or tossing. Look at the walls and your “art,” photos, and awards, etc.

When you are done, it’s time to do the same for your technology. Start with cleaning your keyboard, screens, phones printers, etc. Use static resistant clothes and a compressed air duster. Now you are ready for some heavy lifting.

Backup your computer before you start. Put the backup file on a flash drive or in the cloud so you can recover your files if things go wrong.

Application inventory. You will be surprised how many apps you accumulate over the year. If you don’t use it—delete it. You can always reinstall the app later. Best to delete, save space and memory.

Once the inventory is done, upgrade the applications to the latest versions; this should be done periodically during the year. Start with the operating system and work through your apps. This leads to upgrading your hardware. This is most important to run the latest apps. You’ll want to make sure to have enough memory (ram) to handle the applications you use, allowing your desktop to run faster.

Accounts/Passwords are next. You have many, many online accounts and passwords. If you keep a list in a file, on a scrap of paper or in the notes on your phone…you are asking for trouble. Delete them! The more websites you visit, the better the chance you will be hacked! You leave data crumbs every time you visit a website. How do you think “they” know to send you email or call your phone with spam? Delete and change your password. Better yet, use a password organizer.

Look at the “download” folder and delete duplicate files and apps or anything else you installed. Most of the time, if not always, you don’t need those duplicate files.

Clean out your contacts (and throw away most of your business card collection once you put the information into your computer). Aunt Nelly won’t mind.

Delete unused links to unwanted websites or social media, like Facebook or LinkedIn, cleanout email folders and client folders.

Scan/shred unwanted or unused documents.

Google yourself. You may be surprised by what you find, or lucky if you find nothing surprising.

Upgrade your Wi-Fi network. You will thank me. The increase in speed will make a difference and is worth the extra money.

Take your time going through this list and your spring cleaning. When you are done, you can restore from the backup you made at the beginning, right? Lastly, clean out your “delete” folder. Then it’s time to reboot, sit back and enjoy!

Enjoy the Internet, E-Mail and Social Media, but be careful out there!

Joel Bernbaum Please send your questions and comments to me at: joel@bernbaumfamilylaw.com