Whether you use an iBook, PowerBook or MacBook Pro, you should be conditioning your battery on a regular basis.

First of all, let's talk about conditioning your battery and how to do it. Conditioning your battery means to help it to remember what its full potential is. The only way to do this is to charge it all the way up, then let it run on battery all the way down until it is forced to go to sleep. Once it gets to this point, you want to leave it for about 10 or so minutes. After that, plug your 'Book back in to your power source, and let it charge all the way up again. It has officially been conditioned.

Now that you know how to condition your battery, you need to do it on a regular basis. Regular could mean every day, every week, or every month. Fortunately, in this case, it is none of those. To condition your battery regularly means to run through the above process about once every six months. Will it harm your battery if you don't do it that often? Not really, but you won't be able to realize your battery's peak performance either. Doing it more frequently than every six months doesn't hurt your battery, nor does it do it any good, so there really is no need to do it intentionally more often than this.

On a side note, if you have more than one battery, it's a good idea to swap them out on occasion. This gives them both a chance to act as the primary battery, and helps them to last longer. I swap mine out about every 4-6 months or so.