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I don't think having it plugged in to the mains will cause any significant "wear and tear" on the battery life. Usually it's the discharge/charge cycle that limits the effective life of a battery. Keeping it plugged in, even if power is moving through the battery as the device is used, shouldn't hurt it.
Regarding your other comment, a lot of DR users feel the same way. I've seen several posts over on iRex's forum complaining that the current state of the battery usage will lead to premature battery failure. Hopefully they will fix a lot of that in the 1.5 update coming out on Monday, but they have not made any official statements as to offering any kind of battery replacement discount for early adopters.
One thing that has been discussed a lot is the shutdown problem where it continues to drain the battery while off. Some of the speculation is that there is a document that fails to close completely and that even though the device appears to be shutdown, there are still processes running that are "stuck" on the open document. One thing that some people have reported is that if you close your documents and then "safely remove" the memory card before you shutdown, you won't have the battery drain problem anymore.
I think iRex will fix this as soon as they can repeat the issue and figure out what the problem is. I'm just not sure if it's something they've been able to identify yet, or if it'll be in a later release. Usually with software, diagnosing what is causing the bug is the hard part. Once you've identified it, fixing the code is relatively easy. The last time their developer posted on the forum, it sounded like they were aware of the issue but were still trying to diagnose it.
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