You do not need a 500 laptop if needed. I will explain.
| Level | Explaination |
|---|---|
| Good ($500) | A computer capable of web browsing and reading books. Seriously. The trade off is you will need to pay for web accessible labs versus building a small virtualized environment. |
| Better ($1100ish) | A laptop capable of building a small lab of 2-3 Virtual Machines. Something like an i7, 16 Gigs or RAM and 500 Gigs storage. |
| Best | The sky is the limit. Something capable of cracking passwords decently (read a mid tier GPU), i9, 32 Gigs, and 1 TB storage. |
Note: A GPU is mentioned for password cracking. You absolutely DO NOT NEED ONE to learn or level up cyber security. Keep in mind this document is about learning and labs you encounter will be geared towards this anyhow. You get the same training value in cracking a simple password with your CPU as you do with letting a GPU pound on a hash for 2 weeks.