I have my browser set to open on a blank screen ... no "home" page at all. I have specific destinations in mind any time I open my browser. I don't need a "home" page, feeding content I don't want to see, to get me started.

Home pages came about in the very early days before DNS, when all content was accessed via IP address. One had to remember for example that Google's site is at 216.58.194.78. There was no memory-friendly "Google.com" address. A user's "home" page was simply a list of favorite sites saved as an HTML file (web page file) on his computer that linked those IP addresses to text names/labels for the sites so the names could be clicked instead of having to type in the IP addresses. Users either made their own home pages by writing up the HTML coding, or the browser created it via saving of favorites. A setting in the browses allowed referencing the "home page" file to automatically come up whenever the browser was started. You could also carry your "home page" file around on a diskette for ease of accessing your favorite sites from various computers that you may use, for example at a college or university, research laboratory, medical facility, etc.

ISPs, search engines, news sources, etc. have turned the "home" page into a portal that pushes articles, multimedia, advertising, etc. Mainly advertising so they can make a few cents off every user who opens his browser, and they all fight to get more users to set them as his "home" page. None of it is necessary.

I have always used MSN never found any others I liked as well. It's very easy to change yours to whatever you'd like.

I use a blank page also. It opens fast. Any browser you want to use will transfer your favorites to their site. Its not a bad idea to have more than one browser. Why not give Google a try, or Firefox which is my favorite?

Lea,

Having Multiple Tabs Open in your Browser (IE in this case) will use more Bandwidth. If you have AOL Open in a Tab, it is running. Your ISP is correct, AOL is using part of your Bandwidth and could be slowing things down for you.

The Browser IE (Internet Explorer) is slowly being replaced by Microsoft Edge . The others here are correct, it's not a bad thing to have more than one Browser on you computer. I Have: MS Edge, IE, Firefox and Chrome on my computer. As someone above posted: It's very easy to Transfer your Favorites (Links) from one browser to another. Each Browser should have this feature built into their Settings.

They are correct about Changing the Home Page too. There is really no need to have a Home Page, unless that's what you want! The AOL Home Page could be eating up your Bandwidth and you may want to consider changing it for your own Benefit, it's up to you. It is also up to you as to which Home Page you use, this can usually be set in the Browsers Settings!

1. "I prefer IE as I have all my "favorites" saved."

Yes...and if you want them in another browser, you install that browser, go into IE and export them to the other browser. Takes about a minute. You don't say what version of IE you are using, but here is a fairly typical set of instructions:

Export Favorites from IE

I have four browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. I hardly ever use IE anymore because to me it is so clunky compared to the other three, and the others also make it easier to do things when you are using the browser. But all four browsers have the same bookmarks; I just have to periodically update (export) them so that they are all available regardless of whichever browser I use.

In addition, Favorites are nothing but a file that you can also export and store on a thumb drive. This is a good idea to do in any case: if your computer fails, as happens all too frequently, you can easily restore the Favorites from the thumb drive to a new computer and not lose them all. As someone who has had more than one computer die, use of this precaution meant that I didn't have to reconstruct the 1000's of Favorites I have accumulated over 25 years of computer use.

2. "I thought if I just switched to another tab that I was turning it on."

All tabs are active. Just because you switch to another, doesn't mean that the ones in the background aren't using bandwidth. If, for example, they are updating or playing videos continuously, you are using just as much bandwidth as if you were viewing them.

3. "She suggested using google but I prefer IE..."

Using Google as your home page doesn't mean you are using Google as your browser. Google -- the company -- does have a browser called Chrome, but you have to download it to use it. If you are using Google as your home page, it just means it's the page the browser opens up to...it's not different from the zillion other web pages you could choose as your home page. Using the Google search page as a home page is a good choice.

4. "I have an HP with 1 T of hard drive so it is my understanding that I can leave several tabs open..."

The size of your hard drive is not a factor. Your Internet activity and the tabs you have open load into the computer's RAM, an entirely different kind of memory that is part of the computer's motherboard (the guts that run the computer), not the hard drive. My computer is old and probably has less RAM than yours, but I often have 10 or 15 tabs open. Ultimately, if you have too many tabs open your browser will slow down or crash, but that is a function mainly of the amount of RAM available. RAM stores things temporarily, not permanently, like a hard drive.

"Having Multiple Tabs Open in your Browser (IE in this case) will use more Bandwidth"

Nah, nothing to speak of, unless those open tabs are each receiving some kind of data-intensive flow. Like, having three tabs open each receiving a different TV program.

It's a best practice to close any tab or window you are done looking at, good housekeeping. But being overly fastidious or fixated on doing so, unless you're talking about a very large number or your PC has limited RAM, doesn't accomplish anything.

It's more likely to affect the performance of an under-powered PC than to have any measurable impact on data usage. Unless the user has an internet connection with extremely limited allowance,
like a SAT link or a cell phone link. In those case, any unneeded usage
will add up since the allowances are so meager.

Change your home page for Internet Explorer;

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17426/windows-internet-explorer-11-change-home-page

I agree with bugspop about getting a more static home page. Just curious...are you still using AOL as a service provider? I had them many years ago, but tired of a number of things, including the annoying home page, the quirky AOL-branded browser that had some limitations, the bad pricing, and the bandwidth caps. Maybe they have gotten better, but I, personally, would never use them again if I had any other choice.

Try DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't track you as your homepage.