Well, my AC power meter proves me wrong about the Netwinder:

Power consumption ought to be very similar between the Netwinder (advertised at 15W, 20-25W more likely), and the 6000CL system (calculated at about 17-20W steady state).

The faithful old Netwinder, minus it's noisy fan (which got removed when I made a replacement fanless enclosure for it), draws only around 0.11 amps at 120VAC, or about 13W power consumption. Some of that is loss from the very warm power brick it uses.

Overall, the new 20W machine is going to cost me 50% extra to run 24/7. Barely acceptable, but not too bad in the grand scheme of things, I suppose. EDIT: The ADSL modem it connects to uses 12W just by itself!

Cheers