If I open the Steam Client and the GOG Client at the same time I can see in the activity monitor of Mac OS:

* Steam: 5 - 10 % energy impact
* Galaxy: 40 - 50 % energy impact

This is not good. If Galaxy runs the battery life of my MacBook shrinks rapidly!

beta

it does less but consumes more

I have heard, the GOG Downloader is no longer supported:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/some_of_the_gog_downloader_links_dont_work
I should use Galaxy now. But this is an unreasonable demand. My fan runs loud, the MacBook becomes hotter and hotter. Why GOG don't support the GOG Downloader as long as Galaxy is still in beta?

Fortunately, you don't need GOG Galaxy running to actually play the games. So, to conserve energy, just close Galaxy and only open it if you actually need it for something.

No. I need Galaxy to download some installers.

The downloader works fine for me.

Because it's GOG. Shut down working things first, fix broken crap later. You can download the installers directly through your browser (or any download manager extension/add-on/app/whateveryourbrowserwantstocallit).

I think we need to push GOG to continue support for the downloader. Galaxy is still really unreliable at this state. I guess they really need resource in developing Galaxy, hence they don't have any spare to allocate them at Downloader development.

Yes, but you only need it for the download. Once the download has finished, you can close GOG Galaxy and install/play the game without it.

Alternatively, you could just download the installer through your web browser.

Anyway, it is possible that later versions might improve the power efficiency of GOG Galaxy. Remember, it is still considered beta software.

Even if they did they're not going to want to. Everything is aimed at getting users to use Galaxy now. Maybe they'll do it if they really mess up Galaxy so bad it'll hurt them to keep using it over the downloader, but even then it'll be reluctantly. As far as GOG goes Galaxy is the future.

It depends on what you mean by the word "support" as that means very different things to different people. The GOG Downloader is still available and the game content data is available through it as well. GOG has indicated that for the time being they plan to leave it available as-is and to not intentionally break anything, so people are free to continue using GOG Downloader for now and as long as it continues to be available and work. There is no reason to use the Galaxy beta now if GOG Downloader works fine for you and you're happy with the results.

What it does mean is that they are no longer developing GOG Downloader nor providing updates for the application itself, so it should stay at the current version (3.6.0 IIRC) indefinitely.

Galaxy is only a beta and not an officially released and supported product yet, so if people experience usability problems in their testing of the software which make it unsuitable for their needs, they might be better served for the time being by sticking with the GOG Downloader application instead, or direct downloading their games from the website download links and waiting until Galaxy becomes a finished product to try it out again. Galaxy has a long way to go before it is feature and functionality complete and stable, and it's current state should not be taken as an indication of how they intend for it to work when it is complete.

Hope this helps.