This. I bought my first electric guitar for $43 from a Salvation Army on eBay back in January (ok it was like $93 with shipping.) I spent less than a hundred to get it set up at a local shop and I'm still really happily playing it daily nearly a year later with no real plans to upgrade.
I always try to buy used for new hobbies as much as possible because who knows if they will stick (I'm super happy this one did; guitar is SO FUN and it has been a lifelong dream to learn how to play. After 20 years I finally figured out I needed a lefty guitar to be successful. Better late than never!)
I'm a pro photographer and Backblaze has saved my butt multiple times.
I wish kbin had a save feature; I'm replying so I can find this later 😆
I can't speak about Linux support, but I bought a used Brother monochrome laser printer on Craigslist for $60 and expect it and the toner cartridge to last approximately until the heat death of the universe. Unlike inkjet, laser printers can sit for a very long time without being used.
This is the entire history of all space programs since the 50s.
Retention is indeed a problem. I don't think I qualify as a "woman in AI," but I am a cis woman who has trained (well, fine-tuned) my own models on my gaming PC at home as a hobby. Several years ago, I fucked off and became a professional photographer after working for a Fortune 50 for a decade; I loved my job but hated the sexism. There's almost no amount of money that could get me back to working in tech.
(Incidentally, a bunch of my images were scraped and used in the training data set for Stable Diffusion. I'm mad about this and have no desire to help corporations profit off others' art.)