Periodically I double tap the home button, select one app until they jiggle, then close all of them. I'm curious, are all of them running in the background and using up the battery before I close them all?

they are using up you flash memory more than your battery. shouldn't be noticeable unless there are an excessive amount of apps running in the background

They take up space in your RAM,not the storage.This is more of a problem in the ipad1, which only has 250mb RAM,compared to 500mb in the iPad 2 and 1gb in the iPad 3.Freeing up the RAM by periodically closing the apps in the multitasking toolbar will help prevent crashes due to lack of memory.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I'll keep on closing them out.

My two favorite links on the subject; still relevant, though they are beginning to be a bit dated.

So if you want to know more than you ever thought you would want to know about iOS multitasking, take a gander.

Fraser Speirs - Blog - Misconceptions About iOS*Multitasking

Fraser Speirs - Blog - iOS Multitasking in*Detail

Twerppoet - Thanks for the links. They were very informative and dispel some widely held beliefs.

You're welcome.

Given the feedback on this forum, he probably under-emphasises the problems requiring you to manually close apps, but the basic info is solid.

Below are screen shots of RAM usage . I closed background apps and freed substantial memory...over 300MB.

I realize there are believers on both sides of the issue so please don't shoot the messenger.

Originally Posted by Midranger4

Below are screen shots of RAM usage . I closed background apps and freed substantial memory...over 300MB.

I realize there are believers on both sides of the issue so please don't shoot the messenger.

<img src="http://www.ipadforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=16988"/>

<img src="http://www.ipadforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=16989"/>

Are these screen shots from the System Status app?

Originally Posted by scifan57

Are these screen shots from the System Status app?

Yes they are from system status.

The debate is not as simple as the blogger purports or as the screen shots illustrate and I do not wish to start a debate. I just think their is a difference in how free resources are defined by both sides of the debate.

As you can see there are several states of RAM and I believe iOS certainly rolls pages out from apps in the background when an active app requires the resource. My belief however is regardless of what state of RAM background apps occupy (and it appears to be "other") CPU overhead, no matter the size, are required to manage this space. In the end its all zeros and ones and when they need to get wiped out of RAM before an active app writes their own. Kind of like a chalkboard. I prefer to erase it when I'm done with it. Others prefer to wait until they need the chalkboard again. In both cases it's getting erased, it's just a matter of when.