BTW, I'd like to state that I have used a task killer since day 1. I've gone for weeks also without here and there to test it out.
I use a task killer maybe once or twice a day. Only when my device starts feeling sluggish. As you may all know the Droid starts slowing down with under 35 MB free memory. If you peg it at about 60mb, although devs say you're "wasting away 60mb," the device is a lot faster. This is a fact. Why? As you scroll page to page, widgets gobble up memory. You need a bit of "free" memory" to account for this. Also you need some free memory to combat spikes like when gmail pushes, your calendar syncs, your exchange mail buzzes, your Twitter feed cycles or the widget scrolls through, etc etc.
But what's better than manually killing those tasks to get a brief moment of smooth scrolling is to use autokiller. Peg your minfree around 40-50mb at least. I try 60mb. I'd say my battery life has been about the same across the board. With autokiller, it uses Android's automated task elimination by trying to maintain 60mb.
Yes you could argue this is a waste as that's 1/4 of the DROID's memory, but at 60mb free, the device is silk smooth. Plus, you still have 200mb of memory almost to do stuff. Plus, it doesn't maintain at 60mb anyway. If you are heavily using it, switching through your browser, twitter and email it could drop to 40s. But Android will do its best to eliminate idle tasks to keep your system around 60mb free and responsive.
The good news is that with faster devices, especially the ones with 512mb, 60mb is nothing.
You need a bit of free memory to keep the device smooth. Of course Android defaults to around 30mb or something ridiculously low, and this is hard to hit on the 512mb devices, but the DROID is notorious for running out of memory. If you want a smooth device yet using Android's task killing automation built by the devs, this is the way to go. Automated killing using a task manager won't allow you to differentiate between whats necessary and what's not. And manual killing is a waste of resources.
I'd like to point out that the main reason of why Task Killers may be bad is simply because you're using more cpu cycles killing apps than you are saving. This can be eliminated by simply finding a better way to kill tasks.....such as playing with MinFree. I just hate teh sweeping statements some people make here going "UNINSTALL NOW." Seriously. Useless advice.
Oh, and for those who claim that Task Killers will kill your battery... lets think of it a few ways. If you have an idle task killer app, not set to automatically kill anything, it shouldn't eat much battery.
If you set it to kill every hour, meaning it'll kill apps 24 times a day, I highly doubt it will eat more than 1 or 2% of your battery. In fact, probably opening Tapatalk, hopping onto DroidForums and locating this thread will eat more battery. The display and the radio will eat far more power than a quick kill every hour that takes less than 1 second to execute. Have you ever tried executing a kill sequence and watching your CPU load? It spikes for a second and bam that's it. The command is done. No more. Loading your browser alone probably eats more power.
If you set ATK to kill every time your screen goes off, you could easily do this 40-50 times a day if not more. Yeah, that'll start taking a toll on your battery. If you set it every 15 min or something, that's almost 100 executions. I think by then you will start seeing a 5-10% decrease in battery life if not more... but honestly, if you use it to manually kill off tasks like 3-4 times a day just so you can get some speed in your device so your browser won't feel like it takes 20 seconds to load and your homescreen isn't a slideshow, honestly, it's not gonna make a difference. This is probably why I've never really noticed a difference in my battery life since I use it so sparingly.
