Without getting down into the details of any one such case - my inclination would always be to go with the solution that could run on "less powerful hardware".

Without getting down into the details of any one such case - my inclination would always be to go with the solution that could run on "less powerful hardware". That sort of efficiency has a way of proving to be just that - efficient. Efficient always trumps cool - unless you come from the developer generation where efficient is the only cool.