LiIon/Poly batteries don't need special care and feeding really. They last almost as long when being used as when not being used as the ultimate age of the chemistry involved determines it's shelf life more than anything else asuming it's charged and discharged sanely. The big ones are never over charge (thermal runaway (fire)), never charge faster than 1C (bad for chemistry), never discharge any one cell in a pack bellow 3.1 volts (fatal to chemistry). Discharging a LiIon/Poly to 1% is WAY too close as far as I'm concerned, one cell may actually be bellow the fatal limit while another is still holding the voltage up so the whole pack seems to be above 3 volts per cell. Basically the more cells you have in a pack the higher you should place your max discharge limit, ideally you want to monitor each individual cell separately. Most laptop batteries are in the 14 volt range? So that's 3-4 cells? Just a ballpark I haven't sampled many laptop batteries. With that many cells I'd put the discharge limit at 3.1 volts per cell, you really need the saftey margin if you have mismatched cells. For safe discharge I honestly would put it at 10% Lipoly/ion do not suffer from memory effects so you should basically keep it as close to fully charged as you can at all times. I've never heard of conditioning a lithium pack though a few charge/discharge cycles on a brand new pack might not hurt. If you're going to use it frequently store it fully charged in a spot where a fire isn't going to burn down your house or kill someone. Mainly store in a cool dry place, if it is heated too much charged it can enter thermal runaway all by itself if the package gets damaged especially.