On 5/11/2016 5:53 PM, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
A good uninterruptible power supply will keep you in business through MOST
power outages.

We have probably a dozen 1500VA UPS's scattered around the house.
They come in handy in an outage as you can plug a CFL or LED lamp
into one and have LOTS of light (instead of living with flashlights
or candles). Figure 10-15W for a CFL gives you many HOURS on one
of these beasts (battery capacity is ~170WHr; assume 70% efficiency
gives you 120WHr -- so, almost 10 hours for a "60W equivalent" CFL)

[Neighbors always wonder why our house is so brightly lit
when they are in the dark! : ]

We can access our internet provider as this computer and
"modem" are similarly powered.

I keep a handheld UPS on the bookshelf that I can carry to
wherever (very small capacity.

We don't use one with the Gigaset but only because if we go to
fire up the standby generator in a prolonged outage, the wall warts for the
Gigaset and the Panasonic cordless phone is on one of the "emergency" circuits.

The "base station" for our cordless phone uses the battery in the
*phone* (if it is sitting in the cradle) to power the base station
in an outage. So, the answering machine continues to work -- as
do the *other* cordless handsets (you just can't remove the handset
that happens to be *in* the base station!)

This is one of those "Why the hell didn't folks think of this 20 years ago??"