Laptop battery life...making it last a long time

Kato

I picked up a new laptop for christmas that will be used for school, work and play. It is this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246214

So far...absolutely loving it. I am curious about the battery care and life though. Suggestions please. So far, I have been shutting it down when not in use. Is it harder on the battery if you shut down and power back up 5 to 7 times in a day or better to just leave it on for anywhere from 20 mins to 3 hours? The manual said that the battery does not need to be discharged and recharged, but I have always had my doubts when it comes to electronics like this. In the past, I have always experienced the trouble that any rechargable battery of any type would lose it's strength after so many charges. Or if you don't let it discharge out and then recharge, then it will get a wrong idea of how full the charge is. Like I said...the manual says not to worry, but I just spent some hard earned money on this thing and want to take care of it.

Esh

Honestly, you shouldn't worry about it too much. I've been all over the place with how I charge my MacBook Pro, and after almost two years, it's still sitting at 80% capacity according to Coconut Battery. By the time it hits some sort of low point, you can either just replace the battery or you'll probably be hankering for a more powerful computer anyway.

Midshipman

Lithium Ion batteries aren't affected much by charging and draining cycles. Theoretically if you overdrained the battery it would be damaged, but in reality they are designed to turn off before they get that low. They lose most of their charge just from natural degradation over time, generally at about the rate of 15% lost capacity per year. Excessively warm environments can cause them to lose capacity a bit faster.