battery conditioning

Is there anything special i need to do to a new battery to condition it?
I've read that one should fully charge/discharge a battery a couple of times on initial usage.
Does this apply to Li Ion?

thanks

 

Most laptop batteries today are lithium ion or lithium polymer. That means there's no memory effect, so you don't need to fully discharge. In fact, it's better to do small discharges, then recharge. However, it is recommended that you fully discharge once a month or so to calibrate the battery meter.

 

Yeah it is a good idea to fully charge and discharge your battery a few times.
Tim

 

A few times a month, or when it's first used?

 

If you don't use the battery, you'll be better off taking it out. Charge it to 40%, take it out and store it in a cool and dark place (some even say refrigerator).
Otherwise, dicharging it once a month is OK. Yet, it's not recommended to dicharge it frequently, unless you need it. Every battery has more or less a fixed number of charges/discharges in its life, so...

 

I'm sorry but I rather don't understand, why we should charge it until 40% in order to store it, not in 100% condition?
TIA

 

With Lithium Ion batteries, storing it at full charge will hasten capacity loss. In other words, it kills the battery. This is why new notebooks are shipped with the battery only partially charged. You may find this link informative reading although it is kind of long. Hope it helps.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-19.htm

 

here's a piece of NBR's precious thread database Behold Chinna_n's post! http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39979

 

There's a lot of complicated information out about batteries.

Pretty much everything these days use Li-on batteries (laptops, cell phones, PDAs, etc.) There are great advantages for power and weight with these batteries as well as the convenience of being very low maintenance. The main limitation is a limited life span regardless of use. In other words, no matter how well you maintain your expensive new Li-on battery and no matter how much you use it and care for it you are going to find it loses it's capability to hold a charge quickly after about two years of life.

My recommendation for users is to not worry about it because all the effort you make to save your Li-on battery is going to be fruitless in the long run and there is nothing you can do to save it from it's short life span. You may be able to squeeze a nearly insignificant amount of efficiency out of it during it's first two years but the effort may not be worth the benefit. In the case of laptops you will probably find after two years you can pick up a better quality aftermarket replacement that will outlast your original battery for about $100-$150. I bought a replacement for an old 400MHz Powerbook that gives me over seven hours of battery life now (well for my kids anyway since I gave it to them). But now it's been two years and it's starting to falter as I expected.

A coworker of mine was always compaining that his cell phone battery was dying and I discovered that he was hesitent to recharge it until the battery had completely dissipated because he was still under the old ni-cad way of thinking. I told him to forget about it and just throw it on the charger whenever he had the chance and keep it topped off. It is good to discharge Li-on batteries occassionally but mostly you will do this as much as you need to during normal use such as that long transatlantic flight or whatever....you don't need to go out of your way to do this as a maintenance procedure.