As an update, I'm now evaluating two apps that seem to take totally different approaches to the same problem. Advanced Task Killer Free allows you to identify tasks to kill and beyond that allows you to set the kill interval and kill level. App Quarantine Pro quarantines (or freezes) apps, but allows you to unfreeze and run them whenever desired. It provides a new icon to identify the frozen apps with a little padlock superimposed on the original app. My question is which type of app is best suited to keeping seldom used apps from running in the background and consuming resources such as battery. My initial thought is that App Quarantine will be more effective since it provides a continuous solution rather than allowing apps to startup in the background only to be killed at some user-set interval. I'm not sure what the consequence of killing an app vs quarantining an app is. It might be important to preserve the data associated with an app so that when you do choose to run it, everything is configured properly. I would love to receive comments from others who have tackled this issue.
Pete