40W for 24/7 is around a unit/day or about =A322/year...
Well the PC is going to be on regardless, now I could possibly tolerate my percieved short comings of an LCD display if it offered a decent power saving over a CRT but they don't.
Anyway my PC doesn't take a couple of hundred. It takes around 100 mostly for the CPU, though the video card must take a bit has it runs at 60C with a fan...
It's not a empty box either, 1GHz Athlon, Ultra 160 SCSI controller, SCSI CD-RW, SCSI 18G HD, 2 Network Cards, 1 ISDN card, 1 dual port serial, 1 4xAGP video, 256M of memory (I think). Plus all the normal on board stuff, floppy, IDE, 2 USB, 2 serial, 1 parallel.