Intel PC powered by car battery

How's this for a modding project?

Intel are working to get PCs into emerging markets in places like India, but they have found that one of the major problems they face is the lack of reliable power.

It's not unknown for electricity pipes to just stop working for hours on end.

Now, for us Westerners, the obvious answer is to buy a UPS supply - but such commercial supplies are not only expensive, but hard to get your hands on in the East.

So Bill Sui, the chap at Intel in charge of these kind of shenanigans, desmonstrated a PC which was powered, upon power failure, by a car battery.

Sweet, huh? If that's not cool enough, the front of the machine also sports a hard button that enables the PC to roll back to a safe point upon a problem with the machine - effectively wiping the hard drive and rolling back to a stored disk image. It's kind of like System Restore Points in hardware, on steroids.

We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for other cool bits and bobs around the show... In the meantime, give us your thoughts on this.