Maybe this is a hot take. However, a lot of the Chromebooks that were deployed by schools during covid are build like tanks while being super lightweight and having great battery life. Meanwhile the old thinkpads are 10 years old and are probably starting to wear down. Many Chromebooks support coreboot these days so theoretically they have the potential to be more private and secure. Some of them are also arm which means that they are more efficient from an architecture perspective.

Edit:

I like how incredibly controversial this is. I have successfully split the votes

    • KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz
      6·
      29 days ago

      For a laptop style system, the vast majority of users expect x86_64 software to just work. There are ARM versions for some things, and some can be recompiled by a knowledgeable user, but most software simply won’t run.

      • cizra@lemm.ee
        73·
        29 days ago

        We’re at Linux@lemmy.ml, hon. The average user uses a package manager. The majority of software is open-source and compiles for ARM just fine. Games excepted, but they won’t run on the low specs anyway.