[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by red-beard

Most of the Li-ion manufacturers states that there is no advantage, and possible harm, to draining Li-ion batteries to 0.

Draining it all the way was the procedure with Ni-cads, and Li-ion's do not have this issue.

Other thing for you to think about is that if you are going to be using the laptop for a long time and near 110v power, you might remove the battery before starting it up and simply running on 110v power.

The problem is that most Li-ion batterys are good for about 3-400 charge cycles. If you are sitting at the desk and do not need the battery to run you can take it out and run on the charger/power supply and not run your battery through another "cycle" so to speak. After the battery is cycled these 3-400 times it still works but the power is greatly reduced, resulting in less time it will work off of the battery.

One last thing. When you are on the battery only, hit the fn key and turn the brightness down one or two notches. That alone will almost double your battery's lifetime with most laptops. What takes the most power are the video display and the hard drive. Lower your need for these two and it increases your working time on the battery.

Joe
(who just spent 3 months out on the road with a laptop)