I always see recommendations on /r/HomeServer for using a laptop and I always shudder a bit. I had a battery swell on a Macbook. The thought of leaving a laptop running unattended for months at a time, possibly stuffed in a garage or closet where you won't be watching it for awhile just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
The other thing is that if you have a laptop worth using as a server then you have a laptop probably worth selling. Use that money to buy a proper UPS and cheap server and you may even have money left over. You also can't plug routers or cable modems into a laptop, so it's rather pointless anyway.
I have a UPS because I'm hit with short brownouts every summer (yay, California). But if my grid was better and I only saw outages every few years then screw it. Let the server crash. This isn't the 1980s. Nearly all filesystems and databases (ACID, anyway) recover just fine today. Use ZFS if you're truly paranoid.
The other thing is that if you have a laptop worth using as a server then you have a laptop probably worth selling. Use that money to buy a proper UPS and cheap server and you may even have money left over. You also can't plug routers or cable modems into a laptop, so it's rather pointless anyway.
I have a UPS because I'm hit with short brownouts every summer (yay, California). But if my grid was better and I only saw outages every few years then screw it. Let the server crash. This isn't the 1980s. Nearly all filesystems and databases (ACID, anyway) recover just fine today. Use ZFS if you're truly paranoid.