Caring for the battery

I ordered a new T61 and I'm awaiting it's delivery, along with a 7-cell battery. I'm expecting with modest settings to get ~3 hours out of it with an nVidia card, this sound accurate? (Modest means WiFi on, web browser and maybe a word processor, nothing more)

Also, I was wondering, how do I care for this battery?
What charge level should I store it at?
Is it better to leave it plugged in? Remove the battery when charged?
I've been told to discharge the battery down to 40% and then remove it when not in use, and other things. Is there a good guide to maintaining ThinkPad batteries?

My current laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000) is on its second replacement battery, and is currently holding a barely 90 minute charge, are the ThinkPad batteries going to fail on me so quickly? I need the computer for my school work and AC power is not a common availability when running between classes. I want to make sure I keep the batteries longevity up as long as possible.

 

Notebook Battery Guide is what you're looking for. Holler if something isn't covered.

 

You won't get a consensus on this.

My understanding is it's best to let them cycle as little as possible, so I set a wide window in battery maintenance for the "Charging will start when below __% and stop at __%". That way it never gains a cycle, as I'm almost always plugged in. But some recommend that if you're plugged in to continually let it drain a little then immediately recharge (but racking up that cycle count on your battery). Then others contend you should remove your battery altogether if you are on ac, since they think it will "overcharge" it lol.

I know with solar rechargeable watch batteries, the more they drop from 100% and recharge, the quicker they die. There was an issue with some casio G-shock solar rechargeble models that used a smaller battery- they would repeatedly drain down to 80-90% in normal operation then recharge, while the larger batteries in higher end frogman and mudman models stayed at 100%. The smaller ones were dying much faster, sometimes not even lasting five years.

From the linked faq (thanks zhefei)-

Why I keep a wide window. So I'm not continually partialy recharging if after being on battery few minutes.

and

And for thinkpads it's all cons except possibly temperature (depending on how hot/cool your notebook runs), because we have the battery maintenance feature in power manager to specify preserving charge cycles.

I just know that I stay almost exclusively on ac, hardly ever remove the battery, and mine stay in good condition with low cycle counts, but ymmv so dbafd.

 

If I am on AC i just remove the battery

 

I have my Power Manager settings as follows:

Battery 1 (main, 4-cell): Charge when below 70%, charge to 100%
Battery 2 (ultrabay, 3-cell): Charge when below 50%, charge to 100%

This way I can get about an hour of unplugged use before I hit the first threshold. Even when plugged in I find that the batteries remain cool, so the scheme appears to be working (the batteries neither charge nor discharge when above the first 50% limit when on AC.)

Anyone care to comment on these settings?