> School budgets for student laptops cap out around $300 and they get cheaper if they're able to. It's a challenge to build a quality device at that price point, even more of a challenge to actually make money doing so.

I know. Schools already tend to be under-funded in a lot of countries (on average, obviously there are local variations, as you say). But at the same time shoddy computers are not very useful either. I don’t have an easy solution.