Kensington Mini Battery Pack
The trouble with traveling with an iPod — or worse still, a battery-draining iPhone 3G — is that the damn things tend to run out of juice just when you need them most. Where Apple creates a problem, however, third party vendors rush in to sell solutions. There are at least half-a-dozen iPod/iPhone battery extenders on the market. Energizer's iPodPower2 ($32) runs — not surprisingly — on a pair of AA batteries. The iPowerRush ($30) uses six AAAs. Our favorite is Kensington's Mini Battery Pack. It's a lithium-polymer rechargeable that snaps into the connector dock and indicates through a series of LED lights exactly how much charge it has left. It also comes with one of those nifty retractable USB cables that take some of the tangle out of high-tech travel.
List price: $50
—Philip Elmer-Dewitt