A well specced Thinkpad is more like 2-3k. Calculation from time to money is done assuming a 40 hour work week and the average salary of a software engineer in that team. The comparison was to an Intel core i9 MBP IIRC. And the comparison wasn't two laptops, it was replacing the year or 2 old ones for the new model, not accounting for resale value on the old ones even.