Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

blog.nicoschuele.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#81

Post by jwr »

timtadh wrote: post #71
jwr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do use git. But I often develop on two machines: a laptop and a Mac Pro. Which means I am often in the middle of something when I have to just pick up the laptop and go. "In the middle of something" means that just pushing commits over doesn't cut it. I can (and do) rsync stuff over, but that is annoying and very error-prone (it's too easy to sync stuff the other way around and lose work). I guess you could say Dro…

I don't understand. You can easily cut a branch commit. Push the branch. Pull the branch finish it. Commit. (optionally rebase). Delete the temporary branch. Git handles this problem very well.

Right. I get a call, I need to leave for a meeting in 5 minutes. This is exactly the time when I want to cut branch commits, push branches, pull branches, commit and rebase. Even rsync is better than that.

Put it another way, I don't understand why you'd use Dropbox at all, after all you could easily version all your files in git, using push/pull/branch/commit/rebase to get your data to your different machines. Git handles this problem very well, after all.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#82

Post by 1_player »

demallien wrote: post #74
nicoschuele wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's a typo, I meant mA, not mAh. Fixed.

No, that is not a typo. Thos is a typo - an error created during the mechanical act of typing. Yours was just a plain mistake, you got the units wrong. Own it and learn from the error instead of excusing it away.

Bad day at work?

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#83

Post by dhimes »

robryan wrote: post #44
davedx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

As opposed to there probably aren't really good reasons. Doing it in addition to source control seems like something everyone should do though. The way people generally use source control isn't to push every single line added or changed to a remote copy of the repo as soon as it is done. A commit is more tied to completing a task, you need something else to cover you for loss for smaller amounts of code than that if…

This is apparently the subject of some debate.

More specifically to me, it depends on what branch I'm on. If I'm on dev, I have no problem with big commits. (For features I'll often set a bookmark [hg]- maybe even clone and work from the clone if it's risky).

But if I'm on test or hotfixing on stable, I use very small commits so that I can easily graft (backport) back to dev.

But at the very least I have more than one commit message like -FIX blah blah commit so can get from

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#84

Post by Wintamute »

davedx wrote: post #38
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox 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?

My entire work folder is inside my Dropbox. Most of those projects are under Git version control, other temporary folders, toy projects and bits and bobs are not. This way my work folder is nominally backed up and synced across my machines. I wouldn't advocate using Dropbox as the only/primary backup and version control for important projects, but its totally legitimate to have code inside of a Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#85

Post by tommorris »

tluyben2 wrote: post #7
nicoschuele wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store a lot more than just a git repo in Dropbox. I also use it to share files, etc. But yes, I'm starting to look at alternatives. Maybe I'll develop a small utility to push/pull/share files from my home NAS upon request rather than having a continuous process running in the background.

You can also, what I did, switch dropbox off and switch it on only when you are connected to power for a sync. It's not ideal, but it works. I don't see how dropbox could do better though. If you do it manually to your NAS, you basically do the same as switching dropbox on/off or dropbox in a cronjob. Anything monitoring your file system and synching up with many small files will incur load like this.

I use ControlPlane - http://www.controlplaneapp.com/ - which monitors your "context" (like location etc.) and lets you trigger events on context change.

Just added some rules so that Dropbox quits when I'm in my "mobile" context, but reopens when I am in my "home" or "office" contexts. Will see whether it works on my commute later.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#86

Post by nicoschuele »

demallien wrote: post #74
nicoschuele wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's a typo, I meant mA, not mAh. Fixed.

No, that is not a typo. Thos is a typo - an error created during the mechanical act of typing. Yours was just a plain mistake, you got the units wrong. Own it and learn from the error instead of excusing it away.

Much anger, sense I can.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#87

Post by rsanders »

Osmium wrote: post #76

I switched from Dropbox to SpiderOak recently, and they're a bit better, but feels so clunky. I'm just about fed up with all of them. I use CrashPlan for backups and they're at least good for CPU usage because they have a preference -- max CPU (%) when you're at the computer, and max CPU when you're away, which really does help. Those who are using Dropbox may find something like cpulimit[1] useful. This limits the C…

A non-open-source OS X app called AppTamer can be very handy for managing battery life. You can set process priority and automatically pause non-foreground GUI apps. So when you switch away from your CPU chewing IDE, it'll get SIGSTOP'd.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#88

Post by ajuc »

davedx wrote: post #38
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox 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?

I use both dropbox and git for my home projects. I sometimes develop on my desktop, sometimes on my wifes laptop, and sometimes remotely on another server through ssh, and I don't want to commit/add stuff to the git index just because I move from one computer to another. I could do this with branches, but it's too much hassle when I just want to shut down computer.

So I work on a directory that is in dropbox, and in git, and I can instantly shutdown my PC and start writing code on the laptop. Commiting changes is a separate step. It's quite convenient. Also I can test the code by accessing dropbox public link (it's mostly javascript and static websites), and there's no separate "deploy" step - when I save a file on any computer the change is ready to be tested, always at the same place. With git I would need to remember to commit, and update before I test, or I would need to set up a test server on every computer, and depending on where I work I would need to access different address. The difference between 15 seconds and 0 seconds to test small change is VERY significant.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#89

Post by lttlrck »

9h1d9j809s wrote: post #52
zurn wrote: post #31

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).

OS X 10.9 does show battery use per app in the Activity Monitor. It also shows a short list of battery-draining apps right in the battery menu at the top of the screen.

Powertop has been available on Linux for a looooong time.

Re: Dropbox will kill your insane MacBook Air 2013 battery

#90

Post by wslh »

wslh wrote: post #65
jwr wrote: post #28

Dropbox 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…

So, we need a per application battery usage indicator? Surely this application exists.

On Windows? I can't find one.
Post reply on HN