Plus 10G LANs can be 10w each on older kit.

I cut the cables and filled the 6mm hole with white pre-mixed plaster. Job done.

Now? I’d leave the APs and a dirt cheap poe switch, APs configured for a simple network, no vlan. They can then just plug it into their router.

Funnily enough, I made some measurements too on Windows power use. On an old Mac mini, it used less running native Windows than MacOS (less than 2w vs 3.5w).

I’ve 16GB / i7 Kaby Lake era laptops that will run Windows 10/11 powered up with an active (native) Intel LAN connected at 0.9w idle with services like MySQL installed and running. (0.9w with a USB meter, 1.2w at the wall). Windows is light now, people are still talking like we’re in the Win95/XP days.

For those not familiar with the multitude of Linux services and config with simple needs, Windows is great.

Bad stuff: cost (thought there’s legalish ways around that), it will reboot for updates if you’re not on a server version (though click the delay and manually update once a month to avoid that), MS installing new stuff with those updates, the time it takes to strip out the baseline install stuff (some of the apps like Facebook, maps etc madly installed even on 11 pro).

I had my main server running OMV. I switched it to Win 11 Pro for ease of implementing WoL for powersaving. I use single plain disks and use snapraid for parity/redundancy (it’s media updated maybe two or three times a months so snapshot then). That can do drive pooling too. LightsOut takes care of keeping the server on during media streaming.