Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

2013 Macbook Air users, are you using dropbox?

C

ccapman670

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 31, 2012
133
0
New Orleans / Baton Rouge
I'm currently in college and use dropbox a lot. It keeps all my school related stuff synced between my iMac, Macbook pro and is easily accessible using another computer if need be. I recently bought a 2013 MBA that I love and am getting 12-14 hour battery life on. I read a lot of threads from June indicating that people who installed dropbox were seeing massive hits to battery life, some getting only 2-3 hours on their new MBA's. I haven't been able to find anything more recent and was wondering if any of you are currently using dropbox and is it impacting your battery that much? I'm not sure if Mavericks fixed anything or if Dropbox released a corrected version.

Thanks for any help!

Chad
 
I run DropBox and GoogleDrive. No problems here in terms of battery life. Avg Energy Impact = .27 of what's being used (for DropBox).
 
ccapman670 said:
I'm currently in college and use dropbox a lot. It keeps all my school related stuff synced between my iMac, Macbook pro and is easily accessible using another computer if need be. I recently bought a 2013 MBA that I love and am getting 12-14 hour battery life on. I read a lot of threads from June indicating that people who installed dropbox were seeing massive hits to battery life, some getting only 2-3 hours on their new MBA's. I haven't been able to find anything more recent and was wondering if any of you are currently using dropbox and is it impacting your battery that much? I'm not sure if Mavericks fixed anything or if Dropbox released a corrected version.

Thanks for any help!

Chad
Click to expand...
I use dropbox a lot as well and have not seen any decline in my battery since using it. I stop it from starting when the computer starts up, and I close the app when I am not actively using it.
 
I keep DropBox running the whole time I'm on my Air -- I have it set to run on startup and I don't think I've ever closed it in all the time I've had the machine, and I've definitely not noticed any impact on the battery. Admittedly, I can't say that I've ever managed the 10+ hours that some users seem to get on theirs, but it's well within what I'd reasonably expect given my usage.
 
I didn't notice a battery drop under Mountain Lion on my 2013 MBA when using Dropbox. I think it's more likely the issue was from constant updates to files on Dropbox which caused the wifi to be used more often. I have infrequent updates to Dropbox files.


Since upgrading to Mavericks, I do have battery issues. I've noticed that sometimes when the MBA has no network connection Dropbox will cause kernel_task to use >= 100% CPU which results in battery draining quickly.

This can be resolved by pausing syncing when offline.
 
try Wuala, by LaCie - https://www.wuala.com - first 5gb is free, totally Mac compatible and very much easier than the others to use, imho.
you can easily set a 'public' folder with no need for your readers to sign up for an account - unlike Drop Box and others - and you can also have password only folders.
Drop Box is a bit frustrating to use, which is why I gave it the flick
 
Started working at 8:30am today, got home at 9:30PM, using the MBA with maybe a total of 1h break, 38% left. Dropbox/WiFi on all the time.
 
FWIW: there was a version of Dropbox that was causing significant battery drain, but a subsequent update fixed it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back