Do not turn them off; remap them! That is valuable keyboard real estate.

I use them for buffer switching, since I do that frequently. Left and right change to the next and previous buffers, respectively. Down to quickly swap to the previously focused buffer. Up to bring up a buffer switch menu. Here are the .vimrc lines:

    " Arrow keys for buffer switching
    nnoremap <left> :bprev<cr>
    nnoremap <right> :bnext<cr>
    nnoremap <down> :buffer #<cr>
    nnoremap <up> :buffers<cr>:buffer<space>