Depends on the use case and your perspective. If you want to run a few dozen lines of code to do something like monitoring a sensor and calling an API endpoint -- a microcontroller can do that with milliwatts of power.
> A laptop would consume significantly more power than an RPi.
Not necessarily true. Even some of the TinyMiniMicros mentioned in the article have a single digit W consumption when idle (because they are basically laptop parts).
Now, when loaded this would be true. However, their higher processing power also means tasks get completed faster, so they don't stay at the higher power states for long.
I hear this argument all the time. But unless you're doing something that's solar, battery, RTG or otherwise non-grid powered, then what does it really matter? At what scale is a person running so many old laptops that they need to switch to RPi's to save power?
And if that person can afford the Pi's, they can afford the power, so there's no point quoting power costs.
I didn't say that having resources meant they should be abused. I said that if somebody can afford $150 for a RPi can afford $2.50/mo for power instead of $0.50/mo for power, and that as a result, factoring in lower power use is a poor reason for buying something you don't otherwise need, especially when that power is easily available.
If that power were coming from locally finite source such as solar or wind, or battery, it's a different story.