Did you read the article? Certain models have an option to handle recognition locally. That option is what’s going away.

And no, a device doesn’t have to call home to recognize the wake word. The microphone loops on a local cache waiting for the wake word.

My wife’s 90 year old grandma was able to pick up Mint with absolutely no issue. Just put the shit she needed on the desktop and that was that.

Unless you’re redlining your systems 24/7, the load really shouldn’t be that bad.

My first gen i7 would still be going strong if the mobo hadn’t started dying. Especially running Linux.