Browsing Frugally Without Wasting Bandwidth?

forrestm writes "At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra. At my university, I'm charged around 2.5c per megabyte. I rarely download anything big, but I often go through a large amount of bandwidth by simply browsing around. For example, when I play a YouTube video, click a link, and then return to the video, the whole video reloads. When I read some websites, such as BoingBoing.net or Cnet.com, my status bar shows a whole lot of data being transferred through other domains. Some pages seem to send/receive data at certain intervals for the duration of my visit. When I begin to enter a search in Firefox's search bar, a list of suggestions is automatically downloaded. In addition to this, Firefox often requests internet access of its own accord, even though I have automatic updating turned off. All this is costing me! How do I stop unsolicited use of my internet connection? How do I go about not wasting bandwidth like this?"

Comments

For more choices about what is downloaded...

[rts008]

I would suggest using both.

For example, what do you see on /.'s main page when:
1. using internet explorer (having SWF installed)
2. Windows OS with Firefox base install.
3. Win OS w/firefox and adblock, or adblock +, with the filterset updater.
4.Win OS, Firefox, adblock(+, and updater), flashblock (using the 'click on triangle' to play media)

Using Firefox3 with the 'Noscript", "Ad-block+", "addblock filterset.g updates, flashblock, and dwhelper. (similar to all of my ff profiles- irregardless of OS/PC)from my USB drive.

I have a 4GB USB drive that I run a portable version of Firefox on any PC, and wit the 'plugins' for 'flash', flash need not br installed on the PC.**

**After installing FFPortable to a directory on your USB drive, then go to [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7]

Download and install to said USB drive/Firefox!

No need for the host PC to have FF or Flash installed!