Some general questions about my new thinkpad

Hey all,

I'm just up and running on my new thinkpad, and had a few general
questions.

1.3 Ghz, Pentium M (centrino)
1 G ram
25 G disk
WinXP SP1

Question 1.
I have it plugged into the port replicator most of the time.  I shut it off
every night.  I rarely use it mobile-ly (it wasn't my idea to get a laptop
in the first place, but I will probably be using it for meetings,
demonstrations, and light travel eventually)

I've noticed that my battery is slowly losing charge, even while being
plugged in all the time.   it loses about 1 percent every 2 or 3 days or
so.  It's now down to 96%.

Am I killing my battery by leaving it plugged in all the time it's running?
Does anyone else have the same situation, and what sort of battery
maintenance routine should I employ to keep my battery from dying a slow
and horrible death?

Question 2.
I've tuned my XP config for performance - turned off all themes, I'm using
'classic' style folders, I've turned off all animations, slides, fades,
shadows, etc.   I've disabled about 20 unneeded services, all 'hot key'
applications, etc.

Most of the time, this thing just screams - I couldn't be happier.

Once in a while though (maybe 2 or 3 times a day) I'll be typing (Word,
Excel, green screen, it doesn't matter what i'm running), and it will just
freeze for several seconds (as many as 15 or 20) and will then start back
up with fits and starts.  It remembers my keystrokes, and will complete
them when it quits 'thinking', but I've never encountered this sort of
delay on a Win98 or W2k machine before.   The delay is for everything.  It
locks the mouse, alt-tab between windows/programs, everything.   I don't
hear the disk drive moving or anything else out of the ordinary.

Is this something that's normal for a laptop?  or for XP?  Any ideas of
what it could be that's causing the delay, or how I could find out for
myself?

thanks in advance,

Rick