The whole house generator is a great way to go, but significantly more expensive of course. I looked at these last year after Irene, and decided that typical power outages were of a much shorter duration that I would be happy with a portable gasoline-powered one.

I finally went with a Honda 5000 watt generator, and had an electrician install a transfer switch. It's pretty easy to wheel the generator into the driveway and hook it up, and we have heat, hot water, fridge/freezer/microwave and several rooms' lights/outlets. I got to use it for about 24 hours when we lost power after Sandy and everything worked flawlessly. It also sips gasoline, I got about 11 hours on its 6 gallon tank. Just keep a couple (or three) 5-gallon cans filled up during the winter and you're good for a few days of power outages.

I think this was the best reasonably-priced solution for us, and it worked out beautifully.