I put the charger in the sunniest spot in the house for the entire length of daylight (winter) and again for part of the next day. The reviewer who said that the instruction manual was lacking was right. He gave his own instructions and based on them, I figured out that it was ready to charge because 4 lights were blinking. I charged my iPhone and since more charge seemed to be left, I charged my iPod. I found out later that even though it showed the iPod was charging, it must not have charged up that much because the battery ran down very quickly.  I then decided to charge the device via the computer since it wasn't going to get enough sunlight to try it again before a couple of days had passed.  So I plugged it into the computer with the USB that came with the charger for the computer connection. A window popped up that said the device was too much of a drain on power (or words to that effect) and so I could not charge the device via computer.  I have a MAC OS X 10.6.8 so that shouldn't have happened. Back into the sunlight...but I was not able to get the 4 blinking lights to stay on nor charge my phone again. I sent it back. Yet another thing I like about Amazon, they processed the credit quickly.
I put the charger in the sunniest spot in the house for the entire length of daylight (winter) and again for part of the next day. The reviewer who said that the instruction manual was lacking was right. He gave his own instructions and based on them, I figured out that it was ready to charge because 4 lights were blinking. I charged my iPhone and since more charge seemed to be left, I charged my iPod. I found out later that even though it showed the iPod was charging, it must not have charged up that much because the battery ran down very quickly. I then decided to charge the device via the computer since it wasn't going to get enough sunlight to try it again before a couple of days had passed. So I plugged it into the computer with the USB that came with the charger for the computer connection. A window popped up that said the device was too much of a drain on power (or words to that effect) and so I could not charge the device via computer. I have a MAC OS X 10. 6.8 so that shouldn't have happened. Back into the sunlight... but I was not able to get the 4 blinking lights to stay on nor charge my phone again. I sent it back. Yet another thing I like about Amazon, they processed the credit quickly.