The hidden cost of internet (power): cable vs Fiber/DSL (Uverse)

We have cable internet, delivered via a cable modem (ARRIS (formerly, Motorola) SB6120) to our wireless router (Asus RT-N16). Both have reasonably efficient power supplies, but their combined power consumption is measurable, around 12 Watts, at least under moderate use.  In SoCal that's about $24 a year for power. 

We just "upgraded" to ATT U-Verse. I was curious to see how much power it uses, since the service comes with an all in-one modem/router/wifi combo box (Pace 5268AC). You might think that would mean a lower power draw, but under light use it's coming in at 13 Watts. So the yearly cost is a near tie. I was pleased to see the router was just as configurable as RT-N16 in the ways I cared, such as routing external ports to internal devices. 

The other downside to our U-verse service is it's much, much slower - but that was a choice. The up-side is that you can choose to pay less for lower bandwidth. I was happy to only pay $40/month and only get 25MBps. Only a month ago I was paying $40 for ~100MBps from TWC (ahem, spectrum) but now they want $55/month for that service. Ever since the merger TWC has been raising prices steadily. So much for mergers leading to cost savings. 

Fix PowerShell: The term 'Install-Module' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program

I tried to use PowerShell to Check and Update Windows Systems for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU Flaws but I was dead in the water because the first step, installing the software, didn't work. What follows is the steps that worked to get Windows 7 to install a version of PowerShell that supports "Install-Module".

Here's the error I got:
The term 'Install-Module' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check
the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:15
+ Install-Module <<<<
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (Install-Module:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

The supposed solution was to install the newest version of PowerShell but all the advice didn't work, because all the recommended downloads from microsoft's website refused to install.  The only one that did work was Windows Management Framework 4.0, for windows Vista (6.1). This provided an older version of PowerShell but still didn't support Install-Module. However, once WMF 4.0 was installed I could install PowerShell-6.0.1-win-x64.msi from github and that finally supported Install-Module!

What a involved process! I guess microsoft doesn't test Windows 7 compatibility much any more. Sadly, while the PowerShell script now installs via Install-module, it crashes mid-execution. Oh well. Instead I used a simple Win32 app to check the registry status.