Now I never have to plug my Kindle into an outlet! For my birthday this year Mike and Sharon gave me a ReVIVE solar charger. I wouldn’t have bought it for myself, because I was skeptical about how well it would work, but it’s really proven its utility. I guess this is evidence (not proof!) for Sharon’s gift-giving philosophy.

It looks like a smartphone, but it's not.

This rechargeable battery pack can either draw its power from a normal wall socket or the sun. My Kindle doesn’t even have to be plugged into it while it’s storing electricity. Since I don’t have a window at work, I can leave the ReVIVE to charge at home while I read at lunch. It only takes a couple hours to get a decent charge and maybe half an hour to transfer that to the Kindle.

You can check if it's fully charged while it's suctioned to the window.

Compared to the outlet, the solar option only fills the battery up halfway, but that’s about half a charge for the Kindle, which already goes for almost a month at a time on a full battery. (The secret is turning off the wireless.)

No, this isn’t just for Kindles—it’ll charge anything that has a USB plug on one end. But cell phones suck it dry pretty quickly, so the Kindle’s mostly what I use it for. Has anyone else tried something like this?