I have a PowerBook G4 17", which gets lots of daily use in various capacities. This includes 7 hours sitting idly waiting for calls to come in to a BBS.

Because of this regular and perhaps comparatively heavy use, I've become worried about whether I'm using the battery optimally. Until recently, I would mainly run the computer on the battery, and when the charge dropped to about 20%, plug it back in to charge it back to capacity. And then repeat.

But then I read that a computer battery (or at least, a "modern" computer battery) has a limited number of recharge cycles, and to maximise its life you should run it from a PSU whenever you can. So I've now adopted this practise.

Is this indeed the right thing to be doing? 17" PowerBook batteries aren't cheap, unfortunately!

Many thanks in advance