I have written here before of an alarm clock I bought that is surely the ideal alarm clock. I bought it at a store which mainly sells things that have been discontinued. It has a battery to power its alarm function, and if necessary, sound off with a piezo transducer powered by the battery. That means loss of power will not cause the clock to stop, and it will wake you at the scheduled time whether it lost power during the night or not. It has a slide switch to change from standard time to summer time. But in normal operation it uses mains power as normal alarm clock radios do. It has a very normal/cliche design. I never saw this clock in a catalog, online or otherwise, and when it dies I will have to settle for a lesser alarm clock. Or use my phone I guess.