I know that you are thinking the way one would think about PCs, the more startup programs, the less efficient the machine becomes. Do not worry though. If the programs that start up with Android are not used, they do not take any resources, no need to worry about them, unless you worry about them using data, but that can be prevented too.

Remmeber that you need root to do anything like that.

Try something like startup auditor.

 

I would definitely recommend Droidwall for you purposes then. You can of course put your Tab into flight mode for the night too.

 

you can minimize it by going into settings->accounts and sync. look at each account and uncheck what you don't want synched. remove any accounts you don't want at all. if it's an account relating to email (e.g., yahoo), go into the email app that you use for that account and change the check mail option to lesser frequency.

these will not stop all the background syncing. the only way is to totally remove the account, unless the app using the account has a way to totally stop the syncing. the email app on my phone has a "manual" refresh option.

the other way is to see which account you can access via web browser (e.g., email, facebook, twitter) and just use web browser. that way, you can remove it totally from the tablet.

it's a give and take thing. if you are worry about data consumption and/or battery usage, there are 3rd-party apps that can throttle or turn off data on a schedule for you (e.g., i used to use juice defender on my phone).

 

You are trying to use a smart device like a calculator. With this screen size do not hope for a week of battery life that your Nokia with monochromatic screen gave you 5 years ago.