Stay online in a power cut

It’s easy to take electricity for granted – until you lose it. Even battery-powered devices such as phones, tablets and laptops need regular recharging via a wall socket, while your PC, monitor and wireless router are totally dependent on the mains. When your power supply is cut off, so is your access to your computer and the internet, and outages are more common in the UK than many people realise – and not just when storms cause power cuts, as happened in February.

By investing in a battery backup device called a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), you can protect yourself against most power problems – and it may not cost as much