It is better to completely discharge the battery, as opposed to keeping it plugged in. It will prolong the battery's lifespan quite dramatically. It's a good practice to use for any rechargeable battery (like those for cell phones) to ensure you keep it holding charge for as long as possible. Once I learned this, my cell phone batteries have lasted so much longer - my 3 year old cell phone still holds charge with normal use for 3 days.

You don't have to do this for every use by any means, but be sure to discharge it frequently.

--Andrew

Andrew E said: It is better to completely discharge the battery, as opposed to keeping it plugged in. It will prolong the battery's lifespan quite dramatically. It's a good practice to use for any rechargeable battery (like those for cell phones) to ensure you keep it holding charge for as long as possible. Once I learned this, my cell phone batteries have lasted so much longer - my 3 year old cell phone still holds charge with normal use for 3 days. You don't have to do this for every use by any means, but be sure to discharge it frequently.

 Actually... this is incorrect. 

Your refrencing NiCad or NiMi batteries. Those develop a charge state and "memory" if you will. There were several reasons, but the primairy reason there was heat.  In the process of charing the battery you had to be very careful of heat. Thermal runaway created the memory in those batteries.  Of course, high end chargers actually measured this and tried to prevent it from happening.  But these expensive systems were never in laptops, cell phones ect...

 Todays battery, and specifically the standard 6 Cell  Li-Ion in your laptop, do NOT hold memory. They do, however  have limited, duty charge cycles,  That is, they can only be charge so many times, regardless from where/what the inital charge state was,  to its full capacity.  That statement being true, yes... if you want the best "bang" for your buck out of your battery - drain it, then charge it for the most amp/hr rating possible. Take care here however, for if you disconnect at 50% charge, then use it a little, and then charge again... thats 2 duty cycles, not 1.... limiting the capability of your battery faster.

However, if you just leave it pluged in... it does not degrade the duty cycle of the battery as its not pulling from the battery.  Modern devices that use Li-Ion batterys usually have circutry that allows a "trickle discharge" of about 2-4% before a "duty charge cycle" occurs. This is a designed figure, you would have to look it up when they certified the battery, and it changes for every battery... but the average i belive is 3%.  So when you leave it pluged in all the time, its just topping off that 3-ish% and not counting twards duty cycles, thus not degrading your battery.

Most companies that make laptop batteries aim for about 1&1/2 years of "normal" duty cycles. Again, every company varies on what that means, after all... whats "average use".  Most spec's that I've seen lists them at about 4 full cycles per week.... 1 day short of the 5 day work week.

I can tell you, on my Dell E1705, i've had that battey for over 3 years and its as good as the day i bought it... (ok well.. really probably 1/2 used) but i get the same time out of it NOW as I did then... and I leave it pluged in 80% of the time.

yes there is some nice third party battery software you can get out there. I'm not sure what the Tx2 will do, they do have a "battery health check" and it seems to monitor the state of the battery... not sure if it does anything beyond that though. However, I don't boot with the HP assistant software... so its probably not running.