How do I slow down my bandwidth usage?

Question

How do I slow down my bandwidth usage?

I have a new MacBook Pro. I also unfortunately have Hughes.Net satellite connection for internet as it is the only choice here in our rural town. The first day I used the MacBook Pro, all my bandwidth allowance for 24 hours was eaten through in 20 minutes. I have tried everything, including disabling icloud, eliminating my email accounts, and notifications, and it continues to drain away. I spent time with customer support and did everything they told me and still it is draining away unless I turn off the wireless connection and then cannot be online. I am about ready to return the MacBook Pro, which is a shame, but my PC notebook does not do this, although otherwsie, it is inferior in every other to the Mac. Can anyone put there help me?

Thanks

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 25, 2015 6:15 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 25, 2015 6:18 PM in response to Pets Guardian

excuse the typos: I meant to say "otherwise, it is inferior in every other way to the Mac. Can anyone out there help me?"

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2015 6:25 PM in response to Pets Guardian

You can use Activity Monitor to show you the biggest network users, in order.

Safari pre-fetches things that are on the Top Sites display, so set it to the smallest number of sites possible and do not use it as a default for anything.

Don't use DropBox -- it tends to "phone home" a lot. Certain Google features do as well. Not sure about iCloud.

Set email to check for new messages only on request, not automatically.

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Answer 3

Nov 25, 2015 6:49 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you. In activity monitor, there are definitely some things showing higher levels of network usage. Here is my problem: I do not understand what systems they refer to, and so don't know which are safe to disable or quit. How do I know what these mysterious names are referring to? Just now, I turned on my MBP for less than 5 minutes to check the activity monitor, and the bandwidth shot down in those few minutes so that I had to quickly shut it off to prevent running out of bandwidth and having to pay Highes $10.50 again. So I am afraid to look at it now to specifically cite some of those names. But is there a place I can find the explanation and identify the various names of processes idenitfied in activity monitor? Also, are you saying not to use Safari, but to, for example, download Chrome or another browser and use that instead and it will reduce bndwidth usage?

Thanks again!

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