I don't understand this obsession with cloud-based deep learning for beginners. It creates this hyper-focus on cost: always remember to shut down your instances! With the occasional slippage which causes psychological (and / or financial) pain... The mood is all wrong for somebody entering a new (work-)field.
Google Colab is decent and free.
But you can do computing on cheaper hardware too. The CPU is good enough for learning and a GPU is not outside the budget of many people that presumably already own laptops and such.
I know a local group that shares an i9 / dual GTX "server" and are learning on this shared hardware. I think it's great!
I had a small budget for this learning curiosity and bought a Ryzen and a GTX with only 4GB of RAM. Got a job offer after a while which I had to turn down as it seemed to actually kill my interest in the field. Doing some small personal project now without much fuss to rekindle the fire. And using the CPU for it since it's so small.
Google Colab is decent and free.
But you can do computing on cheaper hardware too. The CPU is good enough for learning and a GPU is not outside the budget of many people that presumably already own laptops and such.
I know a local group that shares an i9 / dual GTX "server" and are learning on this shared hardware. I think it's great!
I had a small budget for this learning curiosity and bought a Ryzen and a GTX with only 4GB of RAM. Got a job offer after a while which I had to turn down as it seemed to actually kill my interest in the field. Doing some small personal project now without much fuss to rekindle the fire. And using the CPU for it since it's so small.