Dropbox slowing down my computer

I have a decent computer, and recently I've noticed a stutter in mouse movement and keystrokes. It's only occasional, but when it happens it lasts for 5 seconds or more. I think I've pinned down the cause, it seems to happen only when Dropbox is updating.

Me and a friend run a Dropbox Minecraft server together, so when this is running, Dropbox is constantly updating, which causes the stutter. This also explains why I first noticed the stutter whilst playing Minecraft. How can I get around this issue?

what are your specs
proccesor & GPU & RAM

8 logical cores (4 physical) @ 3.66ghz AMD phenom x4
1gb dedicated graphics ATI radeon 67something
8gb ram

get a progrrame called proccess exploreer from sysinternals.com
I think that is there website, Will give you very detailed info about the exact proccess that are causing the memory spikes, you really shouldnt be having a prob with even a cpu intensive progrrame running in the background let alone dropbox.
It may be that dropbox is set up to run well on computers with multiple cores there for tying up all the cores at once as opposed to using a higher percentage of one but this isnt' much good if it causes these symptoms.

I've downloaded the process explorer and found Dropbox's process on the list. What would I be looking for in this list? Am I looking for CPU spikes in the first column? Or should I be looking in the Properties window, having double clicked Dropbox in the list?

I'm sorry I'm not an expert on this programme but it can genrally help you,
one thing that may be usefull again im not sure how to do this is to set it up to monitor drop box over a period of days then you can view the data and see when the memory or cpu spikes are happening.
Another suggestion is Get tune up uttilites, its not free although obviousley there are ways to get it for free, Most computers that have not been cleaned with tune up utilites are noticabily faster afterwards, in some cases alot faster, It also has a app inside witch will automaticley prioratize and deprioratize programmes based on what you are actually using at the current time.

you may find these articles usefull.
https://www.dropbox.com/help/26/en.

after reading a bit more about how drop box works I think this has less to do with your proccesor/ram and more to do with your HDD, it seems if you want to have dropbox running all the time the only real solution to stop it affecting pc preformance is to get an ssd.

Open up task manager, right click on Dropbox.exe *32 in the Process window, then Set Priority > Below Normal.

I've had the same issue and the problem is just due to dropbox taking up too many CPU cycles. Switching to an SSD or similar, might help, but the issue is with the amount of priority being given by Windows, rather than a hardware issue. Setting the priority to a lower state, will free up resources for the everything else (including the cursor!).

You'll need to do this when restarting windows, but there are ways to set the priority permanently in the Registry, or through an third party tool. Try googling "Permanently change process priority" or something like that.

Hope this helps.

If you need any further help you can chat to me at http://www.owntheweb.co.uk

Dropbox is resource hungry?

This explains so much