I spent three days last week without power (220K customers out of 300K in Montgomery County, MD, lost power in a storm), and did something similar. The only AC power we had was a 140W inverter from the cigarette lighter in my car.

I tethered my blackberry to my laptop, shared the connection, and set up a small dhcp server on my laptop. (My wife's computer is US Senate issue and I can't edit the IP address: DHCP or bust, cable or full wireless only!) I had both machines sharing the 3G connection.

It was quite functional. Throughput wasn't great - everyone was using their mobiles - but not as slow as dialup. My wife was able to remote to her office desktop and finish up a long draft - July is silly season before the August recess on Capitol Hill.

The inverter was only able to power one laptop at a time, but otherwise, it worked well. On a different note: here's a hearty endorsement of LED and fluorescent lanterns. They last way longer on a set of batteries!

Anyone know anything about really quiet standby generators? I don't need huge power. 7 to 10 KW would probably cover the stuff I really need - blower on the gas furnace, microwave, refrigerator, a few lights, and computers on a really good UPS. (Caveat: a neighbor fired up her portable generator, saved her refrigerator but fried her computer and TV.)

-jk