also having this problem - kill skype with ATK, then immediately check and it has either restarted or it never died - i NEVER use skype - it was installed when i bought the phone - can't even remove it with the app manager .. [very sad]
Hmmm...not sure it was necessary to revive a post that's been dead for month's longer that most of us have had our incredibles.
But, anyways welcome to the Forums.
Not to answer your... well, I'm going to go with vaguely inquisitive frustrated intershouting.
That will happen. Vzw/HTC installed stuff on the theory that it'd be used. To save time at runtime (as well as cpu resources) it loads some apps/services at boot time, and then caches them in ram for when (if they're called). This is very important if you actually use skype (or cityID for that matter) since the user doesn't want to wait a minute for skype to load to make a call (and wants to receive skype calls without starting it up every time). And for cityid, it's important because if runs if there is an incoming call, and cpu lag/hanging is a really bad thing when you're trying to answer a call.
When it's "running" in the background it isn't actually running, it's just sitting inactive in the memory waiting to be called. It is not using any cpu, and no more battery than if that ram were empty. And the small amount of ram they use will not have an appreciable effect on performance.
So the upshot of all of this...you can't really fix it (without rooting). And by repeatedly killing it, all you are doing is forcing it to respawn, killing your battery. Honestly, I'm going to tell you to just get rid of ATK. It really does more harm than good, and is unnecessary unless your benchmarking, or playing really cpu/memory intense games (but if your are, just buy a psp).
My advice is to just ignore it. There is NO significant difference in battery life, or performance either way (Skype "running" v. not "running" in the background). If it really bothers you, you can root. But that's overkill to solve a non-issue.
One last thing, install System Panel, it's a far better tool for checking system performance and what's going on in the background. It will confirm what I'm telling you that Skype et. al. are NOT using any resources in the background you should care about.
And again, welcome to the forums.
