I purchased a laptop 2 days ago and am wondering what the best way to charge it is. With my last laptop I kept it charging whenever I wasn't using it and after three years it couldn't last more than 20 minutes without being charged. My friend said it was better to keep the battery off a charger most of the time. What is the best way to charge a laptop? Does it matter at all? Any help is appreciated.

1. Modern batteries don't develop/have the 'memory' problems that the older ni-cad batteries did.

2. Charging circuitry has gotten 'smarter'.

Those to facts, taken together, pretty much means it doesn't matter. One thing to consider, though, many laptops will never hit top performance unless they are plugged in. Some will let you disable the 'throttles' in the BIOS, but many won't (or at least won't let you disable everything). This is to extend 'battery life' (read...fake run time extension), because if they were completely unthrottled, the great times that they advertise wouldn't be so great (a few hours drops to bellow an hour...in some cases well bellow an hour). So if you are considering using the laptop as a replacement for a desktop, then most definitely keep it plugged in.