This is really up to you, if you have the budget/space for dedicated hardware then you will benefit from it. However, if you are on a budget/space constraints then you could setup some containers in docker either running on the system or in a VM then transfer them over in the future.

Has it been confirmed that it is free? I haven’t found anything saying anything about it at all.

100% but its a lot easier for a business to go “we need to purchase X number this intel product” vs “We need to spend X on product from some company your non-technical ass has never heard of”

In the consumer/small business space I think we will be fine for options but the intel NUC was great for a lot of business applications and I will miss it!