minis like the N100 when you are using it to do things has a lot more ability and uses a similar amount of watts (or can do a lot more for more for just a bit more watts). However when the box is just sitting there with the power on but otherwise doing nothing it uses more power than ARM based single board computers. So the real question is how much will they want to do when they are using it, and how often will that be. If they are watching movies/playing games for 16 hours a day the mini PC is the better answer and won't really cost more energy to run. If they are leaving this on, but only using it for a couple hours per month than a device that uses less watts will save money.