Reading a book doesn’t use up much juice, but shopping or playing a game for an hour or two seems to. Should I top it up every day or less often or doesn’t it matter?
Kinda like my car, I fill it when it gets below half. Much more than that and it will give you a low battery message. I use mine every day and only have to charge it about once a week, but I don’t browse like you do. Pretty sure battery “memory” is not a problem nowadays.
I use mine for an hour or two every day and only charge it every couple of weeks.
…and thanks for reminding me.
If it’s a lithium ion battery (which I’m guessing it will be) then the best thing is to keep it topped up whenever you can.
They degrade over time no matter what you do, but deep-cycling a Li-ion battery kills it quicker.
It is a lithium battery. I charge mine up when it’s below half, often it’s down under a quarter by the time I notice. I use it a lot, plus the light, so that works out to around once a week. It isn’t necessary to charge it daily like you do a cell phone since it lasts 10x longer on a charge.
Hmmm, Mangetout is a minority of one here.
<shrug> I thought it was pretty widely accepted:
Don’t deep cycle
Avoid heat
The battery will degrade over time anyway
I’m not saying you’re wrong! I’m just not sure what to do, still. I don’t know what “deep-cycling” is. Your link is not working for me.
Here is the relevant section from the link:
The device will shut itself off before it is fully drained, so unless you plan to leave it uncharged for a long period of time once it does that, it won’t be fully empty. To sum up: it won’t hurt the battery if you charge it up daily, nor will it hurt it if you wait and charge it up when it’s at half charge or when it warns you that the battery is low.
Deep cycling just means running the battery nearly flat before charging. Some battery technologies prefer it (nicd and possibly nimh), other battery technologies dont do so well on it.
That’s all I wanted to hear! Cool beans! Thanks! 
Okay, gotcha, thanks. 
All Lithium Ion batteries have a maximum number of charge cycles that they can go through. A charge cycle is draining the battery to 0% then charging it to 100%. This works at a fractional level as well. Draining to 90% and charging back to 100% 10 times is equal to 1 charge cycle.
For example, my laptop battery has a cycle count of about 300. To make them last as long as possible, I try to keep my laptop plugged in as much as possible and only going mobile when I have to. Doing so with my iPad is more difficult though, due to the mobile usage model of it. I’m not going to be laying on the couch with it plugged in. Though I try to keep it on the charge leash as much as possible.
I’m at about two years now with my Kindle 2 and it’s still going like a champ.
I leave it on almost all the time (usually on my nightstand) and only charge when it’s empty or before I go on a trip.
The beautiful thing still lasts at least a week (sometimes two) between charges, and I haven’t noticed any decline in batter performance. So I would say you only need to charge it when Kindle needs it.
/why yes, I do consider the Kindle one of the best designed gadgets out there
//No, I couldn’t live without it
Is my Kindle the same one you guys are talking about, by Amazon? Mine doesn’t have a light, the only games it has are minesweeper and connect 5, and I can’t leave it on, it goes to screensaver after a while. (Kindle 2 International)
My case has a light which is powered by the Kindle. You can download other games from Amazon.
And Cecil covered it as well: Are titanium batteries really better than alkaline? Are lithium batteries subject to “charge memory?” - The Straight Dope
(read the link, it actually covers rechargeables in the second half)
Cecil also had a better one that I can’t search for right now. Basically, that “drain the charge to zero” only works if the battery is made of only one single cell (which is never the case unless you built it yourself to give exactly the right amount of power your equipment needs.) If not, when the battery is low, some cells are already dead, and are being damaged by the other cells.
It’s true that modern battery technologies and battery-charging control circuits make the question of when to charge almost moot.
The advice to keep phones topped-off probably has more basis in the utility of a fully-charged device than preservation of battery life nowadays - and with a power-frugal device like the Kindle, there’s probably no justification for daily charging.
One thing that probably is important - when the device says empty, charge it - It can’t be good to let the battery run to the point where the device says it’s empty, then leave it for days or weeks without recharging, as that will run the battery flatter than the device was ever designed to handle.
I haven’t yet joined the really modern world of e-reading. I’d LIKE to, but every time I have money it finds other uses, like right now, I’m working on rebuilding my computer for the upcoming release of Battlefield 3. If the highly unlikely event of having money without other uses should occur, I’d like to pick up a Kindle. I was wondering (and this seems like the right thread to ask), is the Kindle’s battery easily replaced?
Why would you need to replace the battery on a Kindle (or other e-reader)? is the question you’re thinking of. I understand the answer is “if you’ve managed to need to, you need Tech Support”.
I checked several dozen other e-readers before picking a Kindle; they follow a “no parts serviceable by user” model.