How much does it cost to keep a desktop on all year?

[minestrone]

Top quality work VectraMan.

It is pretty pricey and probaly quite a bit more than people think, one of the reasons I was interested was if it would be worth my while just buying a partition of a server somewhere and dumping all my servers and databases on it. Get the bonus of the connection to the team not relying on my crappy Orange broadband coming in on twisted copper pair wire strung across the garden.

Still my server probably costs half as much as the gf's straighteners, hair dryers etc etc.

[VectraMan]

This is what I bought (though from Amazon):

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343

It would be better if it was more accurate at the low end (i.e. only shows whole watts).

I found a bios setting that reduces the off power to 1W by disabling the onboard NIC (in other words, no wake on LAN).