got my new 9 cell Li-ion battery - what now??

[thelittleprincess]

I just received my new model 92P1102 ThinkPad T40/R50 Series 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery...

I've read up on batteryuniversity.com but am sooooo confused. Can someone explain to what I need to do in layman's term?

I know I need to charge up the battery. I've read that on some batteries, you need to charge and discharge 5 times before being able to maximize it and use it. But I don't think this is necessary for the Li-ion battery - am i right or wrong?

When it is charging, can I use my laptop still? Or should I charge overnight or for 24 hours with the laptop off?

I have the T40 (model 2379-D6U) and I do have Battery Maximiser installed - but because it's a T40, I can't set the charge minimum and maximum. I learned that it was the cycling that killed my former 6 cell battery of just under 1.5 years (almost 500 cycles!!!) So that way I see it, I will probably keep the battery charged up in my laptop and use the AC adapter while I am in school (8am to 3pm). When I do decide to use the battery - say when I not near an electrical outlet - how low should I allow my battery to go? I've read some as low as 3%, others say not to go below 10% and others also seem to day not below 80% - with the latter, that wouldn't get me much "mobile" ability would it?

At what point does the battery charging consider recharging as a full cycle? Sometimes i unplug the AC adpater to move from the main lecture room to the study rooms and then lose a few % in power - but when I plug it in again, and it charges, the cycle doesn' t increase if it was already near full. Am I making sense? From my understanding, I want to minimize the number of cycles in order to maximize my battery life.

Thank you so much to whoever can answer my questions (and those patient enough to have read this!!)

[K. Eng]

Battery technology is one of those archane things that everyone says something different about.

I don't think you need to charge and discharge a ThinkPad battery 5 times to get it up to full capacity.

You can use your notebook while the battery is charging.

As far as I can tell, deep cycles harm a battery's capacity more than shallow ones. However, I suspect that batteries have built-in overcapacity (Maximiser says you have 3%, but its higher than that in reality) in order to prevent deep cycle damage. I generally don't go below 10% to be safe, but I might be wrong on that.

I don't know how the maximiser software calculates a cycle.

I would not worry too much about killing the battery. I've used mine for almost 2 years now, with some periods of heavy use, and mine is still rated for 32 Watt*Hr out of the original 48.

[Kenn]

K.Eng is right. Just charge it full once before use and you'll be fine.

I previously read that the battery keeps a log of the cycle by adding how many times it's been charged. Whether that's by percentage or Wh, it knows to add up partial charges - every time it adds up to one charge, it adds one cycle.