Comment Letting the battery cycle? (Score 3, Informative) 363
Most modern lithium batteries should *not* be cycled or discharged "fully"--such a practice degrades the battery capacity quite rapidly. I think the practice of fully discharging the battery comes from the NiMH-type rechargeable AA(A) batteries.
Yeah, sometimes people recommend fully discharging a lithium battery during operation so that the monitoring software can recalibrate it's battery power meter to adjust for the decline in total capacity, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
As mentioned earlier, temperature is a big factor as well. Maybe Haswell will save the day...