The Mail & Guardian recently published two very timely articles, given the widespread power cuts in South Africa.

Surviving Eskom covers several alternative sources of power.  These range from an inverter drawing power from your car battery for between R300 and R450, to an inverter with batteries that will supply about three hours of power for four lights, a desktop computer and a laptop, for R7,600, from companies like Plan My Power.  I am definitely going to sell my noisy generator and rather go this route.

Avoid using your vehicle's battery as a regular backup power source, as it is not designed to be cycled (charged and discharged ) so often - remember that within your car’s environment, it will never get discharged.  Also make sure you know how long it will take to recharge any batteries you acquire - some batteries take a very long time to recharge, and there may not be enough time to recharge them properly before the next power cut.  You can solve this of course by having several batteries (and chargers) and rotating these, but of course this becomes quite expensive.  To learn more about the different types of battery, their pros and cons and best care, head to the excellent Battery University.

To keep working the best strategy is to move to a laptop, if you're not already using one.  This will allow you work for the typical two hours or so of a power cut, and for longer power cuts you could in emergencies run off your car using the R300 inverter mentioned above, that plugs into your cigarette lighter.

If you are looking at upgrading your computer equipment, consider USB peripherals that are powered solely from your USB port.  For example, so-called 'portable' external disk drives, apart from being smaller than regular external drives, usually draw all their power from your laptop, so that you can carry on using them throughout a power cut (running down your battery a bit faster, of course).  If you're acquiring a new laptop, make it sure it has enough USB ports to power all the required devices, as a (powered) USB hub is not going to be much help!  The article computer upgrades that make sense also covers USB-powered scanners and other peripherals, along with some other excellent advice on upgrades generally.

For Internet connectivity, move to a wireless 3G solution, with either an internal PCMCIA card, or USB-powered modem.  Note that newer versions of these in South Africa will support speeds of 3.6Mbps to ultimately 7.2Mbps in the near future, so shop carefully to get the latest technology.

To get the longest working time from your laptop battery, disable or disconnect any peripherals you are not using, including wireless cards and Bluetooth.  Your screen draws a lot of power, so dimming it will also help.  If you get a new battery, it should fully charged and discharged the first few times you use it, as this will "program" its memory to know exactly what charge it can hold.

Solving the energy crisis  - some ideas

• Visualising energy use
• A Smarter Electrical Grid
• Energy crisis? What energy crisis?
• Anatomy of a catastrophe - Eskom's coal supplies
• A good plan, but still too Eskom heavy
• Booming SA economy not to blame
• Rationing the bounty
• Eskom vows to keep lights on, will burn Zim banknotes
• Blackouts back as Eskom caught off-guard by shock cooling called 'winter'

Please contribute other useful ideas or links in the comments below.