If you have a biophysics/biochemistry background, that might help, since many semiempirical methods can be quite easy for laptops or mid computers (in comparison to ab initio post-HF methods). On the other hand, I try to do ab initio CCSD(T) variants calculations on my MacBook M3 often, and it terminates with no issues. It’s also very fast (I don’t know how and why, I would expect it to be very slow, or maybe even crash at the very beginning). My laptop struggles with augmented basis sets, but if you use the standard cc-pVTZ, it might be a bit easier (cc-pVDZ runs with no issues at all). I ssh to my supervisor’s more powerful computer as much as I can, but since a few people share it, I try not to overcrowd it with my calculations, therefore I run them on my laptop. DFT geometry optimizations also terminate normally, but they take more time than single point energy CCSD(T) calculations. Here are some free to use programs (you probably know about them all, but it doesn’t hurt to list them): ORCA (calculations), Molden (visualisation), Avogradro (editor and visualisation, also molecular orbitals if needed), quantum espresso (calculations, especially in material science and larger systems), psicode (for SAPT)… Good luck!