The arrival of netbooks has enabled many a desk-bound worker to free themselves from the confines of an office. Providing on the go computing in a lightweight package, netbooks are growing in popularity - helped by their modest costs.

Netbooks, however, do have their limitations. The screen size is often considerably smaller than you get on a laptop, let alone a full size PC, so it’s not the most practical choice if you’re planning on using it from your kitchen table. It also has a low storage capacity. You won’t be able to store reams of information and programmes on the average netbook, but you will be able to run the applications that you need most.

Specifications: The ASUS Eee PC 1005PE is the company’s latest netbook model and was just released a couple of weeks ago. Looking at its new set of specs, this new model is setting a new benchmark for other netbook models for this year. For one, it now comes with the new 1.66Ghz Intel Atom N450 processor. It has 1GB of DDR2 RAM and now has a larger 250GB hard drive. Another jaw-dropping feature on this new netbook model is its battery life. This little netbook can last up to 14 hours on one charge. This means that you can easily work the whole day on this little machine without plugging it in.

APC ES 350 u (2001 model) 200 watt 350 va ups with a huge battery upgrade. The stock 3.4 amp hour battery in my ups could only run my small office setup for a pathetic single minute. This did not work well for me, since my windows computer takes more than 1 min to shutdown (thanks to random updates and constant errors) and since I lost the usb data cord to communicate with the ups over 5 years ago. Typical replacement batteries for this unit ranged from $30 - $40 depending on where you buy them. Since these batteries were never designed to handle the type of load that a desktop computer throws at them, they usually breakdown within a year or so and so on. I decided after watching many youtube videos on solar setups and a few on people that also decided on a bigger ups battery, to do the same. I now have a ups that is capable of running my desktop for 7.5 hours if I deep cycle the battery or 4.5 hours if I leave 40% reserve. The battery I selected was a walmart brand everstart maxx 125 ah deep cycle battery, which is heavy but will save me money in the long run on replacement apc batteries. I expect this battery to last anywhere between 4-8 years before I have to replace it. Just some extras on the battery, it is capable of running 1500 watts for one hour, but the most I will probably ever pull out of it is 400 watts, via an external power inverter. In order to connect the battery to my ups, I had to modify the ups’s battery door to run some extra wiring and place the …