EML Consulting

06/03/2026

Tip of the Day June 3, 2026 Digital Will So To Speak

As I and my clientele have aged (reasonably well all around) the one issue that is of increasing concern is considering how to organize our digital life in such a manner as to make it easier on those we leave behind. I have been involved in numerous cases that have turned into a digital forensics nightmare because the person in question never made anyone close to them privy to basic account information/details, log ins, passwords, I could go on and on. One current case involves a recent widow and finding that she is going to have to deal with everyone from Spectrum to Con Ed to get the accounts in her name simply so she can ultimately close them. In many cases we are going to have to go to their offices with copies of her husband's death certificate to get the accounts put in her name. Not easy to do for an 80+ year old with health issues. If this is something that you'd like to get a handle on to minimize the issues those close to you will face down the road let's talk. It is not an easy issue to contemplate, but think of it as a digital will that is necessary in this day and age.

Call now to connect with business.

06/01/2026

Tip of the Day June 1, 2026

Hey Mac users, you know you don't need Microsoft Office don't you? What was once the only viable option to "fit in" with the PC world the FREE (comes with your Mac) Pages, Keynote, and Numbers will do just about all the basic stuff you need to do in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Pages/Keynote/Numbers (PKN) will open/read a Word/PowerPoint/Excel (WPE) document, will save a PKN document in WPE format, and because Apple wrote them they work blindingly fast on the recent crop of Apple Macintoshes. I get that people become accustomed to working the way they've always done things, and making the transition from being a hardcore WPE user to a PKN user might tax the brain cells a bit but that can also be a good thing, as continuing to learn means accommodating your thought processes to new things rather than having everything fit in preexisting thought processes. That's a mouthful. Anyhow, there is even another alternative to Microsoft and Apple called Apache OpenOffice, a FREE suite of apps that again does everything Office and Apple's apps do. It has a more bare bones user interface (UI) but it will open and save files in Office formats and it is cross platform, works on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Join the OpenOffice revolution, the free office productivity suite with over 390 million trusted downloads.

05/28/2026

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/28/amazon-m5-macbook-air-199-off/

Earlier this week, Amazon introduced a new $199 discount on the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air, and this sale has now expanded to include nearly every model of the computer on sale at record low prices. You can get the 512GB 13-inch M5 MacBook Air for $899.99, down from $1,099.00, available in all colors. N...

05/27/2026

Tip of the Day May 27, 2026

AI Data Centers are now literally gobbling up every gigabyte of RAM and every terabyte of storage to the point that RAM and storage options on the consumer side are now reaching stratospheric price levels, and availability, particularly with storage, is a horror show. I have recently ordered hard drives direct from a manufacturer and it took forever for them to fill the order. They make the hard drives and couldn’t meet their own delivery promise! The point of this is to forewarn you so you are forearmed, if you’re buying a new computer, get it with the memory that you will need down the road, perhaps get 24 or 32 GB of RAM instead of the standard 16, yes, you will pay more upfront, but it’s not something you can generally add after the fact, and given how operating systems and software are getting more unwieldy by the iteration more RAM will never hurt you. The same goes for storage. If you have a bunch of old hard drives that you have been relying on for backup consider getting some newer ones now so that your back up and storage needs aren’t an issue. Prices are only going to continue to rise. If you’d like some suggestions as to what to get feel free to give me a call or text or email. 

05/26/2026

Tip of the Day May 26, 2026

If you’re looking for a simple but effective home camera to alert you to anyone entering your home while you’re out I highly recommend getting a WYZE camera and their basic $30/year monitoring plan. Once set up you simply turn it on or off from an app on your phone. It is also great to check in on your pet and you can even speak through the camera if needed. I use the original WYZE CAM 3 which is still available from Amazon, the WYZE website doesn’t list it but rather the newer CAM 4. If you’re interested in this and have questions feel free to get in touch and if you do get a system it takes between 30 and 60 minutes to set up entirely which I can help with.

05/22/2026

Tip of the Day May 22, 2026

Make it a priority to go to your Mac, iPhone, iPad (Apple Watch through the Watch app on your iPhone) this Memorial Day Weekend and go to Settings or System Settings on your Mac (Apple Menu)->GENERAL->Software Update and just update if need be. Don't futz around, there are some new and very insidious security vulnerabilities that necessitate immediate action, many of them mitigated by updating to the latest OS updates from the Mother Ship. I see it all in my work and I know people often have an aversion to updates-consider this a tech intervention to help you get over it and help yourself stay out of trouble.

05/21/2026

Tip of the Day 05/21/26

Bunch of Mac/Apple "Don'ts" that I have spent 40 years accumulating, just my opinion, no offense if you can't live without them.
1. Don't have the menubar clock show the seconds or flash the separators every second.
2. Don't have your Desktop Picture change every 5 seconds.
3. If you have a Mac laptop go to System Settings->Keyboard and find where (if your MacBook keyboard has it) Turn Keyboard Backlight On/Off is-set it for 5 seconds of inactivity. Don't leave it set for on all the time.
4. Don't leave 40 apps open on your iPhone/iPad. Either figure out how to close them periodically or power it off entirely and restart it. I literally open an app, do my thing, and close it, and in the case of FaceBook or any of its affiliate apps I log the heck out before closing the app.
5. Don't let anyone tell you, including me, that there is only one way to use a given technology, these are merely experienced suggestions. What I've had the pleasure to observe for decades is a literal multiverse of ways people have put all this tech to use, so do you be you.

05/20/2026

Why I use Firefox and not Google Chrome....

Google publishes exploit code before patch, reported 29 months earlier, is fixed.

05/20/2026

Tip of the Day 05/20/2026 Logins/Passwords

If you are looking for a method to store your logins and passwords this is what I do.

Go to Notes on your Mac/iPad/iPhone. Start a new note and write Passwords at the top.

Go to the File Menu in Notes and select Lock Note. Give it a simple password so you can access it easily.

Start adding your logins and passwords here and if you are in the Apple ecosystem and have multiple devices as long as you’re signed into your Apple ID on all of them any changes/additions you make to your Passwords in Notes will be reflected in Notes on your other devices. No more having to find the Word/Pages file on your computer with all your passwords, wherever you are you have access to them.

05/19/2026

Security Checkup
For $99 I'll come to you and check up to 5 of your devices, computers, phones, tablets, to ensure they have the latest OS/System Updates and turn on an additional security measures you may be missing. Call, text, or email now to schedule. [email protected] (914) 562-1000