Countdown to Christmas, 17 days: PowerGorilla

No idea why this is named after one of our closest living relatives but the PowerGorilla, fresh in at Firebox.com, will help your laptop live a little longer.

It's a veritable powerhouse brimming with emergency leccy that claims to keep a laptop going for between two to five hours when fully charged. Perfect if your laptop gets a little thirsty when you're on your travels.

Handily, it comes with plugs for the UK, US, Japan, China, Australia and the rest of Europe, as well as adaptors for most power-drawing kit - or "virtually anything, from laptops and mobile phones to sat navs, portable DVD players and video cameras", as Firebox puts it.

It should slip nicely into a Christmas stocking too, being "similar to a slim paperback" in size. Those dinky proportions should also make it laptop bag friendly too, but if yours is tighter than gnat's bum, there's also a tasty neoprene case for carting it about in wetsuity comfort.

The whole thing takes between two and a half to three and a half hours to charge up and has a few built-in safety mechanisms to prevent any exploding battery mishaps. It's pretty robust on the outside too, with a MacBook matching aluminium case and some shock-resistant rubber protection strips for that "go faster" look.

It's available now from Firebox for £149.95. If that doesn't float your Christmas boat, then check out the rest of our gift-list countdown for inspiration.

[ Firebox]