Laptop operating systems need to start keeping tabs on what's using your battery, like Android does (with mixed success but that's another story).
Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
31–40 of 111 posts
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#32> I use it to store my code repository [...] Not using Dropbox is not an option for me as I switch machines several times during the day. I'd suggest you invest in a hosted git repo.
i actually do the same as the op and i really like to have a seperate backend up copy of the code in dropbox BEFORE i commit to git. Furthermore i dont really want to commit only because i am changing machines, but if i have something significant and non breaking to commit. This is less of a problem with git as you can just work in your own branches very easily, but still, working on code on multiple machines is just seamless with dropbox.
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#33Open Dropbox when you need to sync, then quit the process. Make sure it doesn't run at OS X start up. I don't see why most of the users want to have a perfect sync all day long since it doesn't happen in real time (large files, slow network, etc.)
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#34I had this happen in the past too and found it to be the result of two issues: 1) Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. 2) There were a few files in a folder than had the owner set to the wrong owner and Dropbox couldn't get permission to access them. This cau…
If you are going to use git/Dropbox like that (and I can't say I really recommend it in the first place) then you should keep a bare repo in dropbox and use it as a local 'remote' (check out working repos from it on each computer that you are working on, and push/pull to/from the bare repo in Dropbox).
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#35This is interesting, I've also got a 2013 MBA and use DropBox but I've not seen a big dip in battery usage. I might do a bit more testing this week and see whether it has had an impact and I've just not realised, and/or I've put it down to the code-compile-simulator cycle.
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#36Oh if only it was one App that killed the battery on the last laptop I bought. Before nuking the default windows install, I did a quick test, with all the crapware that comes as standard, it managed about 4 hours. Fresh install 6.5 hours.
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#37The only takeaway is that his power usage shouldn't be that high with Dropbox idling/paused. But given that he's * surprised at it using a lot of power when doing the initial sync * decided to have a git repo inside Dropbox (just don't do it, you will run into trouble; and it will cause heavy sync activity, thus waking CPU and wifi) * using a unit of capacity to express power consumption I'm not sure I trust his meth…
Dropbox behaves very differently on OSX versus Linux I've found.
likely because linux has inotify
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#38Dropbox is terrible with CPU usage. This is something I reported to them several times, but it seems they don't really care. Last I tested, Dropbox consumed CPU for ANY changes ANYWHERE in your filesystem, not just within the Dropbox folder. So its (slow) code processed changes even when you untarred a large set of files somewhere in /tmp. I also stopped using Dropbox for storing my code because of that — it's nearly…
> And to everyone that says you should not store code in dropbox: a) there are good and legitimate reasons for doing so
I'm genuinely curious: why do this, as opposed to using a DVCS like git?
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#39I had this happen in the past too and found it to be the result of two issues: 1) Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. 2) There were a few files in a folder than had the owner set to the wrong owner and Dropbox couldn't get permission to access them. This cau…
> Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. I really have to say honestly: no shit. Sorry if i sound crass but really? When you use an arbitrary piece of software to automatically modify 100s of files the piece of software designed to detect that exact event has d…
Wasn't complaining at all... Just pointing out the mistake I made.
Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery
#40I had this happen in the past too and found it to be the result of two issues: 1) Using dropbox to house a very large git repo with massive changes and tons of branches... Every time I switched branches, the hundreds of files would change and obviously kick off a major sync job. 2) There were a few files in a folder than had the owner set to the wrong owner and Dropbox couldn't get permission to access them. This cau…
Don't use dropbox to solve a solved problem: git backups should go to another git "server" (like bitbucket or github) But yes, the dropbox client devs should go through these bugs and hopefully fix them
Yeah, was just oversight on my part at the time... Luckily figured out what was wrong and went another route instead of keeping things in dropbox.