Don't be afraid of 'topping up' the battery whenever you get the chance. What reduces the lifetime and capacity of your NIT battery (or any other 2/3-cell, non-stacked lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries used in small mobile devices) is deep discharges.

I've had my N800 since January 2007 and the battery is as new. I charge it whenever I can and avoid deep discharges as the plague, although that's happened accidentally a few times due to some applications running wild with the CPU overnight. I've also seen a _single_ deep discharge of my mobile phone completely destroy the battery - it went from 3 weeks to 2 days capacity.

Laptops are in a different situation for 2 main reasons:

• Their batteries are stacked, that is, series- as well as parallel connections of cells due to much higher voltage (series connection is needed for that), which means that they'll usually need some initial discharge/charge cycles to 'level out' cell differences, and they may also have a 'fuel gauge' which needs the occasional discharge for recalibration (see the OP's post).
• The more important difference is that laptops are hot inside, and lithium batteries don't like to be 100% charged when they are hot - it kills the lifetime of the battery. Laptops that always stay on mains will typically end up with useless batteries after a year or so. This does _not_ apply to cooler devices like the N800/N810 or mobile phones, they behave very differently in this respect.

So, in short - think like a soldier! (try to get some sleep whenever you can, you never know when the next possibility comes up.. just replace 'sleep' with 'charge')