> From our nice position 14 years later it is amazing how much power draw we had to tolerate back then.

I find it incredible how indifferent and uneducated I was back then, about how much power it uses and what the consequences are on a larger scale. I remember keeping it powerd on 24/7 (of course with periods in which it slept). Nowadays I am (hyper)aware of the power consumption of pretty much every device in the house.