Everyone raves about Otter's live transcription, but has anyone actually monitored what the Chrome extension does to your laptop battery?
I had to pull out Powertop to confirm my suspicion. With Otter active in a meeting tab, power draw jumps noticeably. It's not just the tab itself—there's constant background activity even when idle, presumably phoning home or pre-processing audio. On a MacBook Air, it shaved about 90 minutes off my typical drain. For a "productivity" tool, that's a hidden cost they don't advertise.
Switched to a local, offline transcription option for calls. Less convenient, but my laptop doesn't sound like a jet engine anymore. Sometimes the "best" tool is the one that doesn't abuse your hardware.
—aB
—aB
> constant background activity even when idle
This tracks. I've seen the same thing with a lot of "real-time" web tools. They often poll the server or keep a WebSocket alive, which forces the CPU out of low-power states. It's a design flaw, not just a quirk.
Switching to offline is smart, if you can handle the accuracy trade-off. Most people won't check Powertop and just blame Chrome.
What local tool did you land on?
Optimize or die.