The 500ma is peak, like when the chip is booting. It's not the best for power use but it's wifi, the nordic chip isn't wifi.
You might get away with it on a Pi 2 but on the other Pis (including the zero) you don't want to draw over 150ma from the 3v3 pins.

The esp8266 is a great chip for embedded wifi projects, and it's so cheap! But you probably wouldn't use it with the RPi.

It's not an LDO on the ESP module it's an SPI flash. The ESP chip requires at least a 500ma 3v3 supply, the one on the raspi is not beefy enough.

Streaming live sport and/or movies. Havent got round to setting this up yet but this is the aim.

Wirelessly control your window blinds around the whole house. Automatic by timer, manual control or by a light sensor to see if it is dark outside over a time period.
Careful with that though as if you are in your bedroom getting changed and the blinds open then it'll be like that scene from Steptoe and Son.

You'll need the motors, either servo or stepper and they must be small to fit inside each blind.
I have have used small high torque motors and they are really powerful and cheap from China.

Many have mentioned automation - there's a range of ways of doing this, one of the more pre-built methods is to use this thing: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/controlling-electrical-sockets-with-energenie-pi-mote/

You can pick up the mini-board for about £10 and this transmits on/off signals to the point receivers (those are purchased separately but not that expensive really). I believe the software is a bit primitive for it but you can "macro" certain activities, you could send it a packet of data that tells it to turn points on and off strategically which can be handy for controlling lighting for instance. I don't know if it dims but I believe there's an out-of-box solution to do this somewhere. Personally this is what I'm going to do with a series of mine at some point once my skillset is up to par in that area; the community support is pretty good for this type of idea compared to many other platforms which is a rather big deal IMHO.

You can also use it to make your own small scale pirate radio station (handy for transmitting to an FM receiver and play music straight from your collection/storage): http://makezine.com/projects/raspberry-pirate-radio/

Tried to buy one but they sold out between me clicking add to basket and checkout. :smile:

If no one's done it, then invent it, that's what these things are for :smiley:

What WiFi/Ethernet USB dongle did you purchase?

​the idea of the zero is not the power but the size of it. the pi 2 is more powerful but larger in size. and the zero is a fraction of the price of the pi 2.