I'm the opposite. I strongly dislike these services as I feel they are not needed in many situations and open up the vulnerability potential, especially if your system is ever on a network not controlled by you (laptop at cafe, etc). I turn them all off/disable/uninstall them.
If you're on an untrusted network, run a firewall. An open network port isn't much safer just because you're not announcing it. People looking to attack your local web service at Starbucks probably know how to portscan.
The point is that instead of an open port for a service you close all the ports you dont need open, and then firewall what you do need. I'm saying stuff like avahi isn't needed in my case so I turn it off and of course thats not the only measure so I run a firewall amongst other things...
