you can also run deepseek for free on a modestly sized laptop

At 4-bit quant, R1 takes 300+ gigs just for weights. You can certainly run smaller models into which R1 has been distilled on a modest laptop, but I don't see how you can run R1 itself on anything that wouldn't be considered extreme for a laptop in at least one dimension.

You're probably thinking of what ollama labels "deepseek" which is not in fact deepseek, but other models with some deepseek distilled into them.