What do you use internet for?
More people than ever before are using modem to access internet especially where there are no other available networks. Despite the government efforts to ensure that internet access charges are low, The charges are way to high for “mwanaichi wa kawaida” to afford comfortably without much squeeze to his budget.
My focus here is on the light internet users who mainly access the internet to access their mails, social network(Facebook, Google plus and twitter), Doing research work. For heavy internet user, very little can be done to save bundles.
Stopping background programs from connecting to internet.
My approach to save data usage is through:
- reducing data usage by hidden activities running in the background without the knowledge of the user.
- Reduce data usage by other programs items the user is aware of but not really important to what one is doing at the time.
Most of the data bundle is consumed by software's updates running background without the user knowledge such as; Ms windows update, antivirus update, Ms office updates and other programs updates.
- Microsoft Windows and Antivirus updates are very much crucial for any computer security against attacks by virus and hackers.. However, this are the major consumer of the data bundles. It becomes tricky to choose between saving data bundles or risk computer – from virus attack or vice versa. Well, there is answer to the paradox. If within a week you get access to unlimited internet, every time you have the unlimited internet ensure that you update Microsoft Windows, Antivirus software and any other software that require updates. After the updates, disable all the automatic updates from all this software's to manual update where you will be doing it weekly. To disable most of the program automatic updates. Go to program setting> updates. Uncheck the box next to automatic update to Manual update. For Microsoft Windows, Go to start>Control Panel> window updates> change settings. select never check for updates or check for updates but let me chose when to install. You can then update when you have unlimited internet.
2. Another way that you can save on data bundles especially when having few data bundles , but with a lot of work to do is to ensure you update your software's regularly such that they will only takes few data bundles as opposed to when they have to update a full month backlog. for example an Antivirus updated after two days only takes 5 – 10mb as opposed to one last updated one month ago which may consume up to 100mb in one instance.
3 . When browsing not every time that you need images or picture in the webpage. The more pictures or the high their resolution, the more the more data bundles they take. When you open a webpage with images, they can account for almost 60% of the data size( in MB) used. Thus its worth considering disabling the images when not in need of them for example when doing a search not image related. To disable image in most browser, Go to Tools > Options> then depending on browser in can be in contents. for example in Mozilla. its under Content- uncheck the box – load images automatically.
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| Mozilla Images disabling. |
If most of the thing mentioned above are implemented, i can assure that your data bundles may last double or triples the time it used to last.
Have a data saving day.
Good bye.
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