Killing tasks twice a day (with free 'Advanced Task Killer'; in the market), even though some of them will come back up after a few minutes, and switching off WiFi and GPS polling when you don't need 'm anyway, will at least double your battery life.
No Juice Defender necessary.
I respectively disagree with some of what you are saying..
Tasks killers with Froyo have been shown to be almost useless. (There are many discussions on this forum with a majority of people agreeing on this.) But in simple terms, this is their argument: As you mentioned many applications, so killed with an ap killer, will comback up after a few minutes on their own, using more juice to restart than they use when they are just sitting idle in the background. Furthermore, killing a background application that isn't using juice, will make your Droid opperate more sluggishly because it will take more time to call up and activate that application when you do need it. Moreover, Froyo kills applications that aren't being used for a stretch of time, anyway; so you don't need to kill them. On occasion, if you have a bad application that eats juice, a task killer might be helpful to end that application more quickly than Froyo will, but it is far more effective to remove a bad application from your phone, rather than to keep killing it.
I agree that you can turn WIFI on and off yourself and save juice, BUT Juice Defender will do this for you if you forget.. IMO, is a great application because it AUTOMATICALLY turns off WIFI when it isn't available or when you screen is turned off. When WIFI is available and nearby, it automatically turns it on. Then 3G, which uses more juice and is slower that WIFI than readily available WIFI, is turned off. If WIFI can't be found, juice defender stops searching for it after 2 minutes, and activates 3G. It then autimatically turns off the WIFI for you, but will periodically, every 5 minutes, search for known WIFI networks. If it finds one, it turns it on, and 3G off. If you prefer, you can manually turn off WIFI yourself and juice defender won't look again for a WIFI network until you reactivate WIFI.
Sure, you could remember to do all the switching of WIFI yourself, saving yourself buying Juice Defender. But Juice Defender does so much more than switch on and off WIFO.
It lets you manage your applications, so that you can individually choose if data connections run or don't run while using a certain application. For example, say you are playing a game or reading a book on your Droid. If you disable data connections for this game in Juice Defender, each time you load the game, the game will not access the internet and you won't be bombarded by all the advertisements that come during your game play. At the same time, you are saving juice.
At night, Juice Defender will also automatically put your phone into silent mode or airplane mode, according to your set schedule, saving a tremendous amount of juice during the night. Two schedules can be set for week days and weekends if you want. Sure, you could do this yourself, if you remember every night to put your phone into silent or airplane mode, but chances are, you will forget.
Unfortunately, Juice defender won't automatically turn on or off GPS for you, although that is a feature that may be incorporated into future versions. (It would be nice, for example, if an application needed GPS if juice defender would turn it on automatically; then turn it off when exiting that application). You must manually now turn GPS off, and you should to save juice when you don't need GPS.
IMO, EVERYBODY, can benefit from juice defender, except for people who don't sleep and who use their phone's constantly without rest. Many people complain their phones eat up batteries even during standby. If your one of those people, that's where Juice defender really shines. Not only will its night mode work better than the one you could set within your Froyo settings, if the correct settings are used, you can save a lot more energy during the day as well, even when your screen is active.
Juice Defender works but you need to take the time to set it up correctly. While the new version is better at explaining how to do this than the old version, what is missing is a manual explaining everything in detail. The developer is working on this.
BTW, if your phone is rooted, Juice Defender has additional features to save juice. I can't vouch for how effected those additions are since my phone isn't rooted, but I can vouch that for my unrooted phone, I am experiencing a significant improvement in battery life.
