Understanding your data usage on your phone plan isn’t as easy as counting text messages or minutes. Here is a little bit of information to help. A megabyte is a unit of measure. When you send an e-mail, download a photo or view a web page, your phone is sending or receiving data. 1 MB of data is equal to roughly one of the following tasks: sending or receiving 50 e-mails (without attachments), streaming 2 minutes of music, viewing 1 web page, posting 3 photos to your Facebook page, or watching 30 seconds of video on YouTube. 1 GB , is about 1,000 megabytes. Roughly – sending or receiving 50,000 e-mails (without attachments), streaming 33 hours of music, viewing 1,000 web pages, posting 2,800 photos to your Facebook page or watching more than 8 hours of video on YouTube.
Don’t want to try to keep track? Use one of the Apps below to do it for you! Apps
DataMan Next: cost: $2- Made for iOS devices, it tracks data usage against your service plan’s monthly or weekly allowance. Open the app and you’ll instantly see the percentage of data left on the plan and whether your on pace to stay under your limit.
My Data Manager– cost: free– Similar to DataMan above, but for Android or iOS and the display is not quite as easy as DataMan, but it’s free.
Onavo Count – cost: free– This performs similarly to the 2 other apps but with a minimalist interface. It tracks your usage while also breaking down what’s eating up your data – whether it is social media, watching videos, or whatever. Android or iOS
Tip of the month
Speed up your PC’s start up time
As time passes, your computer’s startup takes longer and longer. Preventing unnecessary software from running in the background is one of the ways in which you can reduce the amount of time it takes to start your computer, as well as how fast the computer works in general. You may not realize how many programs are working, even though you personally haven’t started them. Here’s how you can make some changes. One word of caution, though. If you aren’t sure what the processes are in the list, either look them up before you disable them, or eliminate them one at a time and then restart your computer after each change.
If you are using Windows 7 – press the Windows key on your keyboard and the “R” together. At the text box, type in “msconfig” and press enter. Click on the Startup tab. Take the check mark out of any software that doesn’t need to start each time your computer starts.
If you are using Windows 8 – Use Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the Windows Task Manager. There you will see a tab called Startup and the names of the programs starting automatically are listed. Sort them by “Enabled” or “Disabled” and click on the name of the program. You’ll see the button on the bottom right of the screen to either Enable or Disable that program.