Ever notice that laptop batteries seem to die before cell phone battery? And not just running out of juice, but that the battery needs replacing. Well, there’s a reason for that: while most people recharge their cell phone batteries correctly, they will abuse their laptop batteries to the point that they stop functioning.

It’s actually easy to keep batteries properly conditioned. This handy guide covers some of the basics, like don’t completely discharge your battery before putting it on charge, if you use your laptop on the power supply all the time, unplug it a couple of times a week and let the battery discharge down and then recharge it. Use all these tricks, and while your battery won’t last forever, it should last quite a bit longer then if you abuse it.