Whether you’re tethering your phone or you’re lucky enough to integrate LTE into your Chromebook, you probably have a data cap. Some careful planning will make your Chromebook useful without ruining your data plan.
Don’t be sad just because of data cap | kjarrett
Start with the end goal – Use the app offline
Whenever possible, look for an offline alternative to your application. Both Gmail and Google Docs have comparable offline features. When you’re on a free Wi-Fi connection, launch these apps and load your data into them. Pocket is a great resource for this. Add long web pages you want to read to Pocket. Then launch the Pocket app on your Chromebook and it will download the pages.
For content that doesn’t work in Pocket, try including it in Evernote. Evernote works offline if you install the Android version with the Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC). Crop the pages or resources you want and sync them to your Chromebook. You’ll have that content back offline.
Want more Android apps? ARC Welder lets you run most Android apps on your Chromebook.
Use Extension Manager and create a “Bandwidth Optimized” Group
Chrome extensions customize your Chrome and Chromebook experience. Some of them also use bandwidth. For example, I have a grammar checker that sends everything I type back to the server. When I connect my iPhone, I see a spike in traffic even though all I’m doing is typing a letter.
It’s not always easy to know which extensions use extra data, so I use the minimum data needed to get the job done on a data-traffic connection. The bonus is my battery saver minimal extension. My favorite extension manager is the Simple Extension Manager. I right clicked, selected my Optimized Bandwidth Pool and I was good to go.
Need Chrome Extension Manager? Check out our list of other extension managers.
Turn off automatic Flash, PDF and other content
Chrome has its own Flash player and PDF viewer. Clicking on a link can download a large file or animation that you don’t need. From the Address Bar, type chrome://settings/content and scroll down additional. Select Let me choose when to run plugin content.
When a site has a plugin like Flash, you can control + press and run the player only on the content you want. That prevents it from loading automatically. Some websites don’t like this extra step. For those sites, use the Manage Exceptions option. click on the box for mmanage exceptions and set the web page you want to load automatically and select Allow on the right hand side. I keep this setting on all the time because pages load faster for me.
Chrome allows you to turn off images in that same area by scrolling down to Images and Don’t show any images. Websites aren’t exactly the same without images, but it will save you data.
Use the Data Saver utility (Experimental)
Google has developed the Data Saver extension just for these cases. We have covered this extension before. With Chromebooks on a metered connection, this is one of the best ways you can keep your browsing fast and tidy. Since you can’t switch to an optimized browser like Opera, this is the next best thing.
Slow Internet on Chromebook? Test it with Google’s Chrome Connection Diagnostics.
Pause unused tabs
If you still have multiple tabs open on your Chromebook, those tabs may be updating in the background. That costs you bandwidth. The two extensions I use are The Great Suspender and Tab Wrangler. Either of these extensions (don’t use both at the same time) will suspend an inactive tab. This prevents it from updating and wastes both bandwidth and battery.
Controversial: Block ads
Websites that use ads to make money. When you block ads, you are potentially stealing revenue from publishers. In the measured environment, the lost revenue may be less than what you pay for bypassing your data connection. Some sites have more ads than others, so you can use an ad blocker only on these sites. We mentioned AdBlock Plus when it comes to security extensions from Chrome.
While unlimited free and fast Internet is the ideal connection for your Chromebook, it’s not always possible. Some of these tips will help you stay on top of your data limits and still allow you to be productive on your Chromebook.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
