General :: Stopping Unwanted Apps From Automatically Starting?

I have an Acer A100 tablet that I've upgraded to ICS (the upgrade went very smoothly, by the way). But under both ICS and the original Honeycomb, the Android OS has an annoying habit of starting a bunch of apps automatically. Facebook, Google Maps, media players and a whole host of apps that I do NOT want to start all by themselves. I found an "Advanced Task Manager" that will check every 5 minutes and kill unwanted apps automatically. But every time I check it there are still half a dozen apps running in the background that I don't want.

If it were just one or two apps, I would simply uninstall them. But it seems like half the factory apps are intent on restarting themselves no matter how many times they're turned off. My Acer has a very small battery, and I suspect I'd get much better battery life if it would only run the apps that I start manually.

Other than email and the system update manager, I really don't want any apps running in the background. And when I turn an app off, I want it to stay off until I restart it. Is there a way to edit the list of programs that start automatically? Do they all have to be disabled individually? I've checked a few of the apps, and don't see any way to disable the "automatic log-in", "check for new data" or whatever each program might call it's annoying insistence on starting whenever it wants to.