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Help Programs starting on their own

Seems like there are a lot of programs, when I look at my task killer that have started on their own for example

Footprints (what the heck is that anyway... wanted to uninstall but can't)

Skype Mobile

Google talk

City ID

Handcent SMS

Mixzing

Is there a "msconfig" of sorts where I can stop them from starting on their own or....?

Thanks in advance,

Velo
 
I like to be in control of what my computer decides to start and stop. I agree that the phone is awesome and doing a great job... a few bugs here and there that will be sorted out over time but... if I can get started now by disabling a few never or rarely used programs... then why not?

Ah yes... the growing pains of a new handset, it is almost like getting used to a new human personality at work or in life :)
 
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Then I would just use a task killer if you feel so inclined. Or Astro has a process manager that lets you kill processes, apps, services. Just be sure you know what you are doing :)

I felt this way too when first switching to Android, but learned after a while that my phones OS is completely different then Windows.
 
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The thing is those are all services that ultimately let you know that you have some form of message right? So they HAVE to run in order for you to get them. That was the point I was getting at. No there is no way to modify the app manager to run at a higher thresh hold without root access. That is why I say buy a bigger battery and let the phone work itself. I am sure its not lagging with a 1ghz processor because I ave owned 5 different Android and none of them have run this well.
 
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What do you mean, 'let android' do it's thing? These apps are killing battery life.

Which ones are constantly running and killing your battery?

My point was/is that Android is not like Windows...unless you have a rogue app hogging up the CPU there is no need to constantly monitor stuff running on your phone. I'm a tech freak so I know how OCD it can be, but seriously just enjoy your phone :D
 
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what about uninstalling and installing apps? over time wont that fragment your storage? do you need to maintain like you would a regular cpu?

I would think that eventually over time it would fragment. But I trust the developers have thought of this. I just don't go crazy and dnld every app I see and try to be somewhat frugal about it.
 
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what about uninstalling and installing apps? over time wont that fragment your storage? do you need to maintain like you would a regular cpu?

Solid state storage has a very low seek time (essentially nothing compared to traditional mechanical storage drives.) This means that fragmentation will have little to no effect on performance.
 
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What do you mean, 'let android' do it's thing? These apps are killing battery life.

I assure you that unless you have a rogue junk app that won't properly sleep because its poorly coded, none of those apps are drawing CPU/RAM and battery.

People forget that "free memory" is actually "unused memory"

The more apps pre-loaded into memory, the faster those apps pull up when you actually want to use them in the foreground, actually SAVING battery because RAM is so much faster than ROM or microSD.

There is no penalty for having multiple apps in memory.

However, if you get a taskkiller and start OCD killing them off, you'll watch your battery life go DOWN.

Why?

A) You're obsessively going to the taskkiller all the time, which uses battery and is fairly CPU intensive on its own because its monitoring so many aspects of the system. Checking taskkiller every five minutes will use a lot of power for the display as well.

B) Apps that you're killing will probably repopulate on their own, from ROM or MicroSD, which requires a lot more CPU and battery than if they were sitting idle in RAM

C) Killing system processes will likely destabilize your system and potentially cause a slew of "child" processes to clear and reload, draining a TON of power in the process.

Bottom line, i've NEVER used a taskkiller on my Droid Incredible and i'm averaging 20 hours between charges with fairly heavy usage. 50 emails a day via gmail push, a bunch of calls, couple hours of web surfing and music and occassional GPS / navigation use.

Heck, i finished fully charging the phone last night at 8pm. My uptime is 44 hrs and my awake time is 5 hrs and i'm sitting at 85% battery at almost noon the next day.
 
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Two core components for Android

Services
Applications

Services:
Services run in the background and poll/push data as needed (ie: email, weather, Peep, Footprints, location). For the most part, these services that came with the phone should be working OK. You cannot uninstall them, but you can kill them... but REALLY it's not needed. 3rd party apps from the market can install SERVICES and YES some of them are CRAP... you need to be careful of these.

Applications:
Android will keep the last 6 applications in memory, but they are NOT running... they're in a sleep mode (not to be confused with services). They are NOT using the battery. The may include (Map App, SMS app, Gmail client, Music app).

Windows has DOZENS of services running that you shouldn't and/or cant task-kill away. It's what makes a multitasking phone/PC exactly that... multi-processes running and doing great (hopefully) things.

Install a CPU monitor like OSMonitor. Most of these will display a graph in the notify bar or allow you to install a widget.
 
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