Rule #1 for Droid ownership:
If you have a task killer on your phone, UNINSTALL it. No matter what anyone tells you; Android is based on the Linux OS and a task killer will simply work against the memory management built into the OS. This is especially true with Android 2.2 and higher; but applies to ANY version of Android.
A task killer can contribute to poor battery life because the task killer will be busy killing tasks and the OS will respawn them as fast as task killer can kill them off.
As for root, it simply means being able to log in/run apps as the "root" user - which is pretty much the Linux equivalent of a Windows "Administrator" - it allows you to do certain things you cannot do by default, one example being the ability to mount the SYSTEM partition Read/Writeable as opposed to Read only. It is NOT a necessary part of Droid ownership; and should only be attempted if you actually know WHY you are attempting to do it. You should read up on the process, and also should become a bit more familiar with Android before taking the step. Why? Basically because having Read/Write access to your SYSTEM partition allows you to mess things up.
The process itself is rather simple, you simply have to trick the phone into allowing an executable file called "su" to be placed in the filesystem and have the permissions set so you can run it. There is also an app called Superuser.apk that gets installed, this keeps track of which apps are allowed/denied root access (works much like a firewall). The "su" executable is the file you run that actually logs you in as the root user.
The reason this process requires "tricking" the phone is that like I mentioned, the SYSTEM partition is Read-only by default. And it is precisely this partition that the "su" binary must be written to.
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