Turn Your Old Windows Laptop into a Cloud-Free Home Server: 5 Self-Hosted Projects

The piece argues you can repurpose an old Windows laptop into a home server to cut cloud costs by running Nextcloud as a private cloud, a local media server (Plex or Jellyfin), a network-wide ad blocker (Pi-hole or AdGuard Home), a NAS (TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault), and a self-hosted password manager (VaultWarden), with notes on hardware/battery considerations and that it’s a starting point rather than a full guide.