quine's wiki | Main / GetMoreLifeFromALaptopBattery

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/02/ask-ars-what-is-the-best-way-to-use-an-li-ion-battery/

However, following these guidelines (Use your battery. Not too much. Mostly for small apps.) will help your reach the upper echelons of manufacturer estimates.

Full discharge about once a month to a few months to calibrate the battery software (so the time remaining until a charge is required is right).

Extremely shallow discharges of only a couple percent are also not enough to keep a Li-ion battery in practice, so if you're going to pull the plug, let the battery run down for a little bit.

Always charge immediately after full discharge.

The less you discharge the battery each time, the more cycles you get.

One of the worst things you can do to a Li-ion battery is to run it out completely all the time. Full discharges put a lot of strain on the battery, and it's much better practice to do shallow discharges to no lower than 20 percent.

Running the battery out very quickly by drawing a lot of power at once is another way to cause it a lot of strain. For example, running a graphics-intensive game on a smartphone or a notebook for a couple of hours while unplugged is worse for the battery than depleting it over several hours while e-mailing or Internet-browsing (heat is a factor here, too). Again with the running analogy: it's probably harder on you to sprint a mile than to jog it.

The statement "keeping at "full" charge is best to keep capacity" is controversial.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/21351/application-to-display-battery-info

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Exposing the battery to high temperature and dwelling in a full state-of-charge for an extended time can be more stressful than cycling. Table 3 demonstrates capacity loss as a function of temperature and SoC.

However, if the equipment had been in constant battery power with no full-discharge interval for a period of a few months, then a deliberate discharge is recommended. This can be done in the equipment, with a charger featuring a discharge function or a battery analyzer. Avoid doing too many deep discharges for the sake of calibration because this would wear the battery down.