8 causing Internet usage to go over limit???

For some reason since getting my new laptop and windows 8 my Internet data usage has skyrocketed. Is it something with the start page and/or apps or something else? All I know is, I never used to get close to reaching my 5gb limit but since windows 8 I've gone WAY over. When I look at my Internet bill, before I got windows 8 I never had anything over 100mb show up, but starting the day I started using 8 I've had from 100-800mb(!!) show up. Help is appreciated! I have two more days before I can take the laptop back and if I can't figure this out I'm buying something with an older version of windows.

Hello Arontcb, and welcome to Eight Forums.

You might use the tutorials below to set it has a metered connection to help reduced unwanted data usage.

• How to Turn On or Off "Metered Internet Connections" for Devices in Windows 8
• How to Turn On or Off "Metered Internet Connections" for Sync Settings in Windows 8
• Wireless Network - Set or Unset as Metered Connection in Windows 8
• How to Set a Data Usage Limit for Live App Tile Updates in Windows 8

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Arontcb said:

For some reason since getting my new laptop and windows 8 my Internet data usage has skyrocketed. Is it something with the start page and/or apps or something else? All I know is, I never used to get close to reaching my 5gb limit but since windows 8 I've gone WAY over. When I look at my Internet bill, before I got windows 8 I never had anything over 100mb show up, but starting the day I started using 8 I've had from 100-800mb(!!) show up. Help is appreciated! I have two more days before I can take the laptop back and if I can't figure this out I'm buying something with an older version of windows.

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Everyone keeps complaining about this same problem, you are the third one this week. Brink's tutorial will show you how to set the metered connections.

You can also go hit the windows key plus Q to get to the Apps page, find task manager, then the App History tab, it will show you the network usage history of your apps.

I think we concluded that the live tile apps, many of which are turned on by default, are consuming bandwidth at a fairly substantial rate but it's not in the GB amount from what I saw, although there may be an underlying cause involved.

I guess that was one power band width saving feature they didn't think about and for some reason they enabled all those live tiles by default.

The last one I saw was a new RT tablet that was downloading the 500MB office update over and over again (it was failing). Had to have the user take it to the local uni and allow it to download over a (very fast) internet connection. That and a few modern apps were sucking up small amounts of bandwidth daily until dealt with, but windows updates, especially when the device is first acquired, are sometimes the root cause and should be considered.

It is certainly something to be aware of.

I have removed nearly all the apps. from the installation image.

Metro IE, the store app and mail are still there.

That seems to stop the problem.

I have no use for the bundled apps - they are pretty awful.

There might be something worthwhile in the store at some stage - I haven't given up hope.

Glad I got rid of those . It seemed to install faster , and the Apps directory is now only 50mb.

Win8 is slightly less bad after doing that.

Windows Update for Win 7 has put in 500MB today and it was a heavy hitter on my 12GB plan. Disable Windows Update until you get to an unlimited place. Beware, Windows Update tries to enable itself so I would recommend disabling it through services.msc and finding Windows Update.

Or just set the connection to be metered, and WU won't run when connected to that particular network unless critical security updates are found. It also disables tile updating and downloads from the store when connected to that network, and by default disables download of any device updates on that network as well (although this setting is configurable in PC Settings).