John Benson dot com

Snow is on the ground, lights adorn houses and trees around the neighborhood.  It’s the holiday season leading to a fresh new year ahead of us.  The new year is a perfect time to do some maintenance on your computer as you tick away the seconds to your holiday break from work or school.  For the GTD crowd, it’s also a great time to do your yearly review and clear your Inbox.
I therefore give you a set of tasks that you should do to make sure that when January 2 rolls around, you’ll be using a stable, fast machine.
Lets start with that Mac you have laying around.  Sure you don’t have to defrag throughout the year, but because you’re not constantly tweaking the machine to make it work, it’s bound to be a little cluttered.
ep 1:  Clean and Backup
Start with your Documents folder.  There are no doubt a number of folders which have old stuff which you don’t need on your internal HDD anymore.  I had a few disc images laying around (Blackhat Briefings Slides, Ubuntu Images) which could be deleted.  Everything which I haven’t opened in a few months gets placed into my 2006 archive folder, which will soon be placed on my external HDD, zipped/encrypted and uploaded to my webserver, and burned and given to friends for off-site backup.
Somewhat in keeping with the GTD methodology, I created a References folder which houses various text files on Joomla development, PHP, and all the other files which I’ve saved but really didn’t have a home.  
Don’t forget to go through your Pictures folder to sort and cull all the pictures which aren’t worthy of being in your iPhoto library.
It’s kind of scary to see such a clean Documents folder, but there is so much less to look at.
Step 2:  Clean up your Apps
You’re going to need an application like AppZapper which will make double-damn sure that all the remnants of your apps are gone once you delete them.  I just start at the top of the list and work my way down, zapping all kinds of shareware as I go along the way.  Do I really need 3 different RSS readers?  I don’t think so.
If you see an app that you don’t even remember downloading…that definitely gets the axe.
Step 3:  Consolidate the iTunes Music Library
If your music collection is epic in size, then you’re probably using an external hard drive to house your library.  Sometimes, though, you may import some new music when you’re away from your drive the music is placed on your internal drive.  Simply select Consolidate Library when your external is connected and you’ll be able to delete the files (through the finder, not iTunes) from your internal HDD.  
Step 4:  Take one more long look
Using a neat little program called Disk Inventory X, scan your HDD for extra files which may have been hiding, stealing valuable space.  The scan takes a while and will slow your Mac down, so go get some coffee while it runs.  Garage band files proved to be taking up a great deal of space, which I could take off.
Step 5:  Update your software
Go beyond Software Update and find out if there are new versions of some of your software and widgets.  Many apps check automatically, but I usually turn that off because the updates aren’t critical.
Step 6:  Full System Backup
Now that your drive is neat and tidy, you can create a backup of your whole system (not just your archives) just in case something catastrophic happens.