I live in a remote area and have to use dial-up internet on a low-quality phone line; my connection rate is slower than anything any of you has probably ever dealt with. My use of firefox is thus very limited, but works for my email site and for the NOAA text-only weather forecast. Even this limited activity is apparently slowed by Firefox independently going to other websites *for its own purposes*, judging from the Windows 8 activity monitor. Is there no way to turn that off? Can I see a list of what these sites are and why Firefox/Mozilla feels a need to communicate with them? I want CONTROL of my very limited bandwidth or a good explanation of why I cannot have that control. I'm getting ready to try a Linux solution to Window's own use of my precious bandwidth. I can carry the laptop to a broadband site and update programs and security data as needed, but when at home I want all my bandwidth for myself and that does not seem like an unfair thing to expect. And yes I have researched how to minimize this other use of bandwidth and turned off things and followed the recommendations on how to get Firefox to minimize this type of activity but still there is this access of websites that have NOTHING to do with my own navigation needs, as far as I can see.