All I know is that my phone's battery DOES last longer with a task killer.

Seeing as I don't run any tasks except for when I want them and not when the apps makers want them to run, it helps being able to kill them on my own accord.

There are certain apps I don't want to run at all but the manufactures put bloatware on the phone against our wishes and we need to quash them such as facebook and weather apps I never use.

I have things like Gallery, Google Search, Camera and we7 that do tend to just sit there, open, for hours and hours on end. After I've used it just the once, perhaps first thing in the morning. They don't tend to close on their own just by time, even if they are supposed to. I can feel a slowdown when doing other things, so I just close them from the Launcher rather than a separate or automated task killer.

I get the idea, and I'm not for task killers in general. I don't go around shutting down services or processes I think are necessary of course. I just like a more manual approach usually for temporary benefits. I have things locked from closing like Messaging and SetCPU, but I don't think I've shut down apps and thought "crap, that's going to take an extra 2 seconds to load in 5 hours time when I next use it".

Maybe you should be unistalling apps you don't want then. Only apps with background services you've installed will be running, widgets are generally the worst offenders.

I have some widgets in the Market place and got a genuine complaint in my app ratings then it stops functioning properly when you use astro to kill tasks. You seem to be happy with how things are working when you kill tasks so get rid of your widgets and any apps that auto update you dint use.

I knock off everything with a task killer, no problems noted and a much better battery life.

What version of Android is this on? Are they definitely sitting "open" as running processes, or just cached processes that sit there using no power but still get listed by task killers?

I simply can't recreate this with the first three of those apps (I don't use we7). As soon as I exit out of them, they are no longer "running", though they are saved state. Admittedly I'm using 2.3, but it shouldn't make that much difference...

From the first boot and not personally done anything, Gallery and Camera usually just sit there. Or somehow end up running later. This is with Donut, Eclair and Froyo. Donut was the stock ROM I had bought the phone as. The rest were a combo of cooks and stock ROMs. I hadn't even opened a picture but Gallery and Camera tend to open and remain open. I usually see them waking up in the morning too. No schedules or anything. Google Search, a bit strange but I 'sometimes' see Browser closing but Google Search will remain open as a separate app. If Browser doesn't auto-close, I see the free memory being low and the phone running much slower than capable while I do other things.

Again, I don't use a task killer. This is the Launcher that lists it as open (I know from experience as when I close it separately, at least 2MB+ gets freed without fail, and apps do load quickly if they are listed as running, and I'm not a donut. People can 'feel' the differences.). The cooked ROM came preloaded with Advanced Task Killer or whatever, which duplicated the results of the Launcher, but I uninstalled it.