Battery charge limits - where (and whether) to modify?

[odin]

After about 4 yrs use the 9-cell battery is nearly dead: status=red, design cap 71.28Wh, full charge cap 24.40Wh after only 37 cycles.

When powered, the computer was almost always on the AC. Shut down for the night, except for few (5-6) times, when it was running on the AC, full power, for a few (5-10) days non-stop, simulation works. Charged to full, drained to shut-down.
Did conditioning several times, but not as often as advised. I was under impression that Li batteries easily tolerate being plugged in or top-charged: still have the orig.battery in my old mobile since 1999, may keep running for days.

Bought new 9-cell battery. The instructions say, if I expect to have notebook mostly plugged into ac, to reduce the charge limits (where settings permit). And I want to make it last, this time. So, a couple of questions:

1. Where are these settings on t41p with win xp? And do they help?
2. Found plenty of posts about battery life; most are old. Nothing on battery charge limits. Any new advice, in general?

Thank you.

[SHoTTa35]

1 - Battery Thresholds different depending on if you're using Power Manager or Battery Miser from Lenovo (if you don't have it, install it, it's actually good to keep it) In Power Manager go to the Battery INformation tab and click Battery Maintainance and set the thresholds there. For Battery Miser you select the icon in the taskbar and choose the first tab (forgot the names) and then choose Battery Health and then should be there.

2- When it comes to batteries everyone has a different opinion. Some will tell you juts use the thing and don't worry about it, 3yrs is a long time for a battery to last and if it did then you got your moneys worth. Some will say if you use your system on AC most of the time then just take out the battery and leave it in a nice cool dry place till you need it again (i leave mine in the laptop bag sometimes) or some will say use those battery thresholds as you're looking into now. I have mine set to 86% and 96% - My battery got about 25 cycles since i got it and i've lost about .15Whr. I got it at 50.10whr and it's now at 49.95whr. That's probably in about 4 months usage since i got it in may 2007.

[bill bolton]

1. Where are these settings on t41p with win xp? And do they help?

The battery threshold settings are hard coded in T40/T41 models. You can't change them.

Cheers,

Bill B.