Or download for free from half a dozen Chinese AI labs (at least for the moment.)

... or Google Gemma or Mistral.

Aren't those widely regarded as 'not as good', because right now LLM's are a game of "who has the most resources wins"? And even those require very high end personal computers.

The freedom pendulum looks like it swung away from individuals.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542100