content: There is a ton of stuff people can learn with something like pfSense that you can't really get out of a stock consumer router. I'm not trying to sell it as a perfect device for everyone, but if someone is already well-versed in networking or would like to learn more, it's a powerhouse in terms of cost:capability. Even for the not-so-technologically inclined, it's very user-friendly. For instance, it's a nice way to run Snort IDS, or a perimeter firewall with SPI, or host an OpenVPN server if you'd like to VPN back to your home connection while you are away or set-up a site-to-site tunnel for friends who would like to securely share content. It combines a ton of resources and capability into one well-supported box, and gives a person tons of fine-grained control over their network connections. As for power consumption, yes it consumes power, but the Core2 and newer Intel processors really don't use as much as people might think. For instance, Core2Duo chips get around 4.2x better performance per watt ratio than P4s. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-cpu-power-consumption,1750.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_figures