Mobile broadband usage tips?

Patrick20

I'm changing my phone and broadband providers at the moment and i'm using mobile broadband over my 3 phone. Anyway ive just bought a the monthly addon which is 1gb of data. I've only used it since yesterday and i've used nearly 200mb (or so NetMeter says) if i keep going at this rate it'll be done before the weeks out. I've not been on any videos either.

Is there anything i can do to cut usage down a bit? would disabling advertisements mean i'm downloading less?

timmmers

Avoid flash sites and sites with lots of flash banner ads. especially ones with video in the ads which is common now.

If you also have a home connection then Firefox will tell you the file size of sites as they load in the status bar..so you'll know what to avoid.

A well designed page used to be 50k or so, but as designers get lazy and stupid they think everyone has broadband and make heavy pages that aren't required unless they have something unusual there. Bells and whistles are the things to avoid basically.

You can disable ads, images, almost anything ....it's a matter of balancing how far you can go with what you can afford.

1gig isn't much at all for regular use though.
So far this month I've done :-
Total Peak Time Usage: 15,856.4 MBytes
Total off Peak Time Usage: 5,908.2 MBytes

t

Patrick20

I cant use firefox on my mobile broadband for some reason. It crashes on loading. so i'm using ie 8 just now.

I've just turned off images and put auto block on ads.

I'll e staying away from myspace and bebo, and will just go on their mobile sites on my phone.

What ive noticed from my NetMeter readings is that the last hour on MSE has cost my less data than 1 page loading on some sites. atleast thats good news.

This isnt a long term plan i hope to have an unlimed connection( probably from 02) by next month at the latest. Before I cancelled my virgin broadband i was using about 10gig+ in a day.

Iconic

You could switch off automatic updates for Windows,AV and other progs.

Just make sure you update when you are near a bb connection and don't leave it to long between updates.

Patrick20

I've already done that for windows, but i cant seem to do it with my AV. i use avast if your familiar with it let me know. I know adobe updates itself aswell so if you know how to stop that it would be a big help.

timmmers

Patrick20 wrote: »

I've already done that for windows, but i cant seem to do it with my AV. i use avast if your familiar with it let me know. I know adobe updates itself aswell so if you know how to stop that it would be a big help.

Right click Avast icon on the toolbar bottom right and pick settings (basic update)

check manual there and youre set

A lot of updaters can be stopped in windows defender by stopping them runing at startup .

t

kwikbreaks

Patrick20 wrote: »

Before I cancelled my virgin broadband i was using about 10gig+ in a day.

That's more than many use in a month. If you don't know for sure how you were using that amount then the chances are somebody must have been piggybacking your WiFi because simple software updates and browsing no matter how complex the web pages simply couldn't come close to that usage. Even all night on iPlayer wouldn't.

Patrick20

No one else was using it. it was all me.

Patrick20

kwikbreak's i think you misunderstood my post about my(well my families) usage on virgin. That was all my usage from playing ps3 games, downloading music and films, bbc iplayer, etc. I can assure you noboody was piggybacking. The updates and images are being turned off because im on mobile roadband just now.

kwikbreaks

No I didn't misunderstand at all. So long as you know how it was all used then fine but 10GB per day (if every day) is a huge amount - half a dozen divx movies + more MP3s than you could listen to in a week would be less than 10GB