Dave Thacker from RADICAL RC www.radkcalrc.com is a known authorith on batteries and their care and feeding.

All of the answers above are both right and wrong for various reasons.

Dave has a web page devoted to questions and answers about batteries and their care, charging, cycling and if they are bad or not. the URL is

http://members.aol.com/davthacker/abattfaq.html

Go there and read up on what Dave has to say. He supports other charger systems and batteries other than what he sells so that adds quite a bit of creditabilty to what he has to say.

Take a look at that and see if that does not answer your questions about batteries.

DS.