My experience isn't quite so dramatic.
With normal internet usage (web/email/IM/MP3s) my power draw hovers around 210-215 Watts. Same activity with Seti@Home running, processing 8 work units, and power draw hovers around 250-255 Watts so I'm not seeing that much of an increase.
(For reference I have a 2009 Mac Pro, 2.26 GHz 8 core with 8 GB of RAM)
Depends on the time of year.
May through November it is:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
The rest of the year it is Blank.
it's not like they're playing Crysis up there or anything (that I know of anyway).
Crysis! They can't even watch DVDs up there, remember?
your average laptop has considerably more computing power than the first shuttles had, and while the electronics have been updated, the engineering behind the overall superstructure, propulsion, etc are equally dated.
We were interviewing Buzz Aldrin on Friday and he brought up the fact that everyone mentions how his cell phone has more processing power than the computer they had on Apollo 11. He said something to the effect that he'd still take that Apollo computer over a newer off-the-shelf computer because it was built specifically for the job and they knew every little thing about it. (I was taking photos not conducting the interview so that isn't exact but is pretty close.)
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. -- Henry David Thoreau