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But I was eager to get something a little more powerful, so I could get rechargeables filled up within a few hours. And, I figured that a larger panel could also power up my phone, and maybe portable DVD player.

I wasn't able to find a whole lot of products that fit this requirement. But if you're willing to pay somewhere between $100 and $300, you have options. You can either buy a single charger for batteries and gadgets, or you could buy a small panel with the right cables to do the job.

Choices among the panels themselves are growing as well. Most panels are made from silicon and often have that cobalt blue look.

But the emergence of flexible thin-film solar cells are a great option for portable applications, although you'll pay more per watt for the convenience.

There are rollable or foldable panels sold under the PowerFilm or Sunlinq brand names that let you pack up a panel into a small package. They range from 5 watts, which would be good for batteries and gadgets, up to 25 watts, which could even be used to power a laptop. Dell Inspiron 1501 Battery  Dell Inspiron E1505 Battery   Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery   Compaq Presario CQ40 battery

Laptops: Wondering whether I could find a simple way to power my laptop took a sizable chunk of my holiday vacation time and, in the end, I didn't get what I wanted.

The problem with laptops is that, unlike music players, newer models consume more and more energy, according to Ed Bender, the president of Sundance Solar, which sells solar goods for portable applications or educational purposes.

"Laptops are tricky," he said. "In general, electronics power usage is going down. That's not true of laptops. People are getting bigger monitors, like with the new Macs, especially if they use them to play DVDs."

Sundance used to recommend that people buy a 10- or 20-watt panel and a cord (in the style of a car adapter) to plug into their laptop. But for many applications, that approach simply doesn't produce enough electricity, Bender said.

Instead, you need a panel and a back-up battery that your laptop plugs into.

Global Solar, which makes the Sunlinq foldable solar panels for military and mobile applications, lays out different options (click here for PDF), which includes an $89 Xantrex small back-up battery or a smaller lithium polymer battery from Tekkeon.

I priced out a setup with a relatively small 12-watt foldable panel, the Tekkeon MyPower All battery. Add a necessary cable, and it was about $350. A larger 25-watt foldable panel adds about $200 more to the setup.

As expected, Kogan has launched what it claims is the world's first laptop that's based on Google's Chromium open source operating system, which makes the product different from the real Chromebooks launched a few weeks ago by Samsung and Acer.

The laptop doesn't come with embedded 3G or a dedicated search button as its rivals do. It even has a Windows button which shows that the laptop was not originally designed to support Chrome OS natively. Sadly though, Kogan didn't go the ARM way which would have helped it save a few dollars.IBM ThinkPad T60 Battery IBM ThinkPad X40 Battery HP NX6120 battery toshiba Pa3331u-1brs battery

Unlike current Chromebooks, the Kogan model comes with an Intel Celeron M ULV SU2300 processor clocked at 1.3GHz; this should allow it to comfortably outrun the competition although the 1GB RAM might be just a little too tight for comfort.

It also has a 30GB SATA SSD hard drive, a 11.6-inch WXGA LED Display, a 1.3-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, three USB, LAN, VGA, HDMI and microphone ports plus a 4-cell 4600mAh battery that can deliver an autonomy of up to 3.5 hours.

At £269, the Chromium-based Agora costs the same as its Ubuntu-based cousin (which has a 250GB hard disk) and £20 less than the Pro version which has twice the RAM and a 500GB hard disk drive. Kogan's Chromium laptop is expected to be available from the 7th of June in the UK.