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Previously before, I didn't touch apps like GeekTool because I was afraid that it would slow down my system performance severely. (MacBook Pro 15" C2D 2.4ghz Late 2008) However, I have decided to use it as a clock on my wallpaper.

How much CPU % would GeekTool use? I only have the measly 2 hour battery for the MacBook Pro, so conserving as much CPU cycles as possible would be my aim.

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2 Answers

I have the same machine as you do and have GeekTool running.

My GeekTool atm uses 0.0% CPU and 19.9MB of RAM.

I have several geeklet's running which poll different websites or system processes. (9 Geeklets)

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An interesting test would be to measure a full battery cycle with and without GeekTool. I have a Mac Pro 2008 and tho I have 8 cores, I sometimes see certain CPU activity coming from GeekTool, I had a log monitor among other things, but nothing fancy. But then again, I don't have battery to measure :S – Martín Marconcini Apr 23 '11 at 15:07

I used to have it as a clock until I realized that the console command used for getting the time took about 10% CPU. At first I had this run every second but quickly realized that wouldn't work. Then I changed it to every 1 min but then I had a clock that was off from time to time. My tip is to go with the top bar clock. I do however not know if it requires less to load t

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