Can a laptop be the cause of extra data useage?

[chewtah]

I only get/want to pay for 4 gig of data a month, and I was wondering if a small Ipod or tablet
would be the way to go to use less data. I understand they dont use as much due to small screen etc.
I don't watch long videos and only the occasional you tube.

My present one is a Toshiba laptop, A660 7 HP 32 bit.

 

[Computer0304]

A tablet could use more theoretically if you leave wi-fi on have and lots of apps that use notifications. So it would be better to just use whichever one that suits your needs.

 

[Alejandro85]

Screen size is totally irrelevant for data traffic. What matters is what you put there, how do you use it and what the installed programs really do.

I would go for a normal notebook computer. For one, tablet's OSs are much more prone to be "cloud"-centric and tend to upload many things (with or without your consent) and many programs are infected with advertisements all over the place, which consume extra data for receiving spam. Just look in a typical android phone how many installed programs require the "unlimited network access" permission.

Desktop OSs on the other hand, while not immune to the above, are much easier to tame. Firewalls come to mind to keep a strict control of data traffic, and many other tools are available for controlling exactly what's going on on the system as a whole.

But if you use something like YouTube, you can expect some heavy data consumption, no matter what OS you chose.