I keep seeing posts about running AI on a single machine. "Just use Ollama on your laptop!" Sure, that works — until you want to run a 30B model while your IDE is indexing, your test suite is running, and you're editing a video. I have three machines. Not because I'm rich — because I kept old hardware alive and gave each one a job. Here's how I split AI workloads across a Mac Mini M4, a Windows PC with an RTX 3060, and an old Ubuntu box, and why one machine was never enough. The Three Machines Machine Specs Role Mac Mini M4 10-core, 16GB RAM Orchestrator, coding, light inference Windows PC AMD 9970X, 128GB RAM, RTX 3060 12GB Heavy inference, image generation, GPU rental Ubuntu Box Older CPU, 16GB RAM Background services, OmniParser, CPU inference fallback Total cost for the additional machines: the Windows PC was a workstation I already had, the Ubuntu box is a repurposed laptop. The Mac Mini is the only machine I bought specifically for this. Why Three? Because One Keeps Running Into Walls.…