What is the point in disabling devices?

[krma-thkpds]

I mean I know it is used for trobleshooting the devices which might conflict each other, but is there any other advantage of this? Like preserving some energy thus increasing battery life? Or anything else?

[aabram]

To save memory and cpu cycles which are wasted on things you never need anyway. For example on my machine I don't need time, themes, printer spooling, help & support and some other services. If I don't need them why should they be running?

[GomJabbar]

Occasionally you have to disable a device to free up resources such as IRQ's for other devices to work. I believe this is less a problem now than in the past. Also if you disable a device, that should free up some RAM and CPU resources and speed things up a little.

I have disabled the infrared device, because I never use it, and that way I don't have to worry about setting up security for infrared, to prevent someone from gaining access to my ThinkPad through it.

[jdhurst]

Aside from something specific like GomJabbar mentions, or in my case, stopping Mighty Fax from starting up everytime I start, there is no need to disable services. I have two computers (IBM Desktop and IBM ThinkPad) built from the preload in both cases and fully up-to-date in both cases. The CPU runs at 2 percent or less 95 percent of the time or more. I see no need to "improve" upon this. ... JD Hurst

[leoblob]

For desktop computers at least, there is a situation where disabling a device can be helpful. If your motherboard has built-in video, sound, etc, and you upgrade with a new card, somethimes the only way to make it work is to disable the device that's on the motherboard. In these cases, you can't just uninstall the on-board device since it will try to re-install itself on the next boot.

[krma-thkpds]

I see. So there is no need for disabling them if everything works well. I was wondering if doing so could significantly improve performance. Ok, thanks for pieces of advice.