Battery improvement/rooting/RAM app

[Jonpwn]

two questions:

1. As many of you know, the motorola droid's battery life is pretty bad. I work 11 hour shifts and i'm constantly running around, sometimes i'm in the basement for 4-5 hours at a time and the battery will drain ridiculously fast.
other than using the power control widget, would rooting my droid increase the battery life? And with task killer, i've heard that after you kill something, the phone will start the application back up again if it is necessary and will slow down my phone even more.

2. Is there an application that allows me to see how much RAM i'm using? sorta like a PC's task manager equivalent for the phone?

 

[harrellj]

If you look at the battery screen in about phone, what is using the majority of your battery? Depending on that will say whether rooting will help. The best way to kill the battery (without rooting and overclocking the processor), is to have a radio running when you don't have access to what it is expecting (out of wireless range or 3G range) and it keeps trying to gain that access. Since you mentioned being in a basement, I'm guessing that might be the problem. One alternative method (better if you're consistently there on a set schedule) is to use something like tasker/locale/timerrific/etc and just have them disable whichever radio is causing the problem (assuming it is a radio issue of course).

 

[Jonpwn]

the top 4 from most usage to 4th most are usually display, idle, voice calls, and dolphin browser
Display and idle often swap with each other depending on how busy i am.
it's just really a nice phone and it sucks that i'm scared to play with it becaus eof it's weak battery..

 

[xkape]

I am assuming here so I am looking for a more definitave amswer. Live wallpaper takes up more battery than regular wallpaper. Keep in mind the phone is usually on with a blank screen. So i'm not sure because of that. The feature is just neat cause I've never had an animated wallpaper but if it saves battery life, I'm down for going back to still life.

 

[Jonpwn]

my wall paper is still as well, it's actually the stock wallpaper.

 

[xkape]

Mines stock too, it's just a live one. The space one. Too many drugs in college I don't know, just neat to look at.

 

[Siacono]

Spending that much time in the basement is most likely the culprit.
Not having 3g the device flips to 1x which has a higher battery consumption.. I used to work in a plant out in the boonies and would
often have the same issue low to no signal inside the building