That shows how careful we have to be when evauating the state of Microsoft's surveillance. And we have to be careful how we read the second article too. It doesn't say Microsoft isn't doing too much surveillance, it only says that the Forbes article doesn't establish anything.
Your fix for actual tracking is installing
Spybot Anti-beacon. It will multiply the inquiries exponentially, as detailed in the second article. But no connection will be made with the Microsoft servers and no data will be transmitted. That will result in a tremendous decrease in Neal's data usage.
But mind you, if you do the same test in the Forbes magazine you'd conclude that Spybot Anti-beacon actually INCREASED your problem. Your internet bill will prove otherwise. It's not the number of times connections are attempted, it's the amount of data transmitted over a completed connection that increases your data usage.