So about a month and a half ago, I discovered the reason we were screaming through our internet’s data plan so quickly.

I had a Data Vampire in my own desktop.

For some reason, my desktop’s system was using over 80 GIGS of data, and I had no way to find out what, specifically, was causing it.  With only 100 gigs on our plan, it’s no wonder we were going over so quickly!

So I went through everything I could think of to try and shut things off.  Then, at the end of the month, I reset the usage stats.

Even by then, I could see a difference, as total usage within the past 30 days had already gone down.

Here is my currant usage.

Well, there we have it.  In the space of about 4 weeks, my system used less than 3 gigs of data.  A difference of close to 80 gigs!

My browsers used more data – I use one for this blog, so there are a lot of photos uploaded, while with the other, I had uploaded some videos this month, so I used it more than usual, even taking into account that I gave up Facebook for Lent.

My total usage for the past 4 weeks was just over 13 gigs.  Slightly more than what I use on WiFi with my phone which, after I no longer visited Facebook, dropped from about 11 gigs in 30 days, to less than 10.

Our original internet account reached about 88% before we switched over to the new satellite (a matter of switching cables on the router).  With the new account, we haven’t even hit 45% yet.  Which means that, in total, we used more than 100 gigs, so having two accounts is still saving us money.

I still have no way of knowing what exactly on my computer was sucking our data plan dry, but whatever it was, I seemed to have stopped it.

So we’ll only be paying about $200 a month total for internet, instead of closer to $400.

Still more expensive than if we had been able to install a tower and get non-satellite internet, but at least we’ve GOT internet.

Unless something weird happens, it appears our Data Vampire has been slain!

The Re-Farmer