Picked an $80 local AI model over a $20/month cloud plan and my old laptop is struggling

William Jones · 2026-10-15T21:40:02.891836+00:00

Last month I got tired of paying $20 a month for cloud AI and tried a free local model on my 5 year old laptop. It took 3 hours to download and another 40 minutes to get running right. I picked the smaller 7B version because the bigger one crashed my system twice. Now it answers fast but the fan sounds like a jet and the laptop gets hot enough to warm my coffee. I only use it for summarizing emails and short questions, nothing heavy. Has anyone else ditched cloud AI for local, and did you have to buy a new machine to make it work?

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Picked an $80 local AI model over a $20/month cloud plan and my old laptop is struggling | AI Innovations - HW Forums