Continue Browsing during Power failures

Power cuts (or load shedding, black outs, or however you want to call them) are very frequent and frustrating here in hyderabad. Other times we face the low voltage situations (also called the brownout). In such cases I would be able to continue using my laptop (given that its a 9 cell Thinkpad), but lets face it - Very little work of value (or timepass, as my friends like to call it) gets done without the INTERNET! It is even more frustrating when you tend to work from home, and you are cutoff due to power loss and have to rush to office.

The best way to beat this situation is to bring out the old UPS you used for your old desktop. Even if u never had a UPS, you can buy a cheap one for less than Rs 1500/-. Once you connect your modem and wireless router through the UPS, you will get a backup of almost 2 hours straight. However if you are using Sify or other ISPs which given you a direct ethernet cable to your house you might be out of luck, since the local hub at your operator will lose power. This was one more reason for me to switch from Sify Broadband to Airtel, other than Sify's pathetic customer care and reliability issues (15 days of no internet in a month makes you go crazy!).

Also, if you are watching a movie with friends and power goes out, you can connect the speaker set to the UPS, to get the enhanced volume. Or in emergencies you can charge your cell phone on it too.