Basically, make a “business argument” for the upgrades. CEO’s are generally business bros with limited practical experience. They understand sales and people pleasing/kiss assing. So the right argument is usually how it will increase sales and make their employees more productive and happier.

Unfortunately with the current equipment being 7 years old, “anything is better than the shit we currently have”. With win10 being put to pasture, your company needs to do a full replacement. So buy the cheaper ones that the CEO wants, then work on convincing him to buy the higher end ones when the cheap shit dies in the next 2-4 years.

Phrase it like "Due to the urgency of our upgrade needs and budgetary constraints, I understand why we need to buy lower quality equipment. This equipment has a life expectancy of 2-4 years. I recommend when these lower quality models need replacement we go with a higher quality model and a life expectancy of 5-7 years. This will in the long term reduce our expected cost by $xxxx/year.

I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista after the 2nd servicepack fixed most of the shit. By that point it was a tolerable OS.

I am currently hoping for a major service pack next year to fix all the stupid shit they did in Windows 11.

You know kind of like when they fucked up windows 8, attempted a quick fix in 8.1 and finally fixed it in win10.

Of course they are at 4 major updates with win11 and it’s still shit so the hope is very thin.