New 2400c battery

[beachycove]

I just bought/ received a "new" 2400c battery from powerbookguy (in his eBay incarnation), thinking that I'd be best to have a spare (since where would you find one of these again, once they all sell out?), stuck it in the 2400c, and it charged right up to register 2.5 hrs. So assuming that this figure is not completely inconsistent with what I'll get on proper calibration (which is still to be done), I have a second battery for the 2400c and between them nearly 5 hrs of runtime. Maybe I'll do better after a proper charge, discharge and recharge cycle.

I'm one happy customer.

Now, these are original, Apple-branded batteries and not third party cells manufactured for die-hard 2400c fans sometime in the G4 era. My question is this: How does this Lithium-Ion battery stay alive for 6-7 years at least, merely sitting on a shelf, when more recent Lithium-Ion batteries can up and die within a year in storage? Powerbookguy says he's never had a problem with any of the hundreds of these he's sold. Do they really "not make them like they used to"?

 

[Paralel]

I've never come across a lithium-ion battery that was trashed in storage as long as it was completely discharged before being put into storage. I've got some that are equally old and work just as well as they did then if they are charged up.

 

[beachycove]

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html , paragraph entitled "Long-Term Storage." That advice goes back a good way, at least to the time of the Wallstreets.