At the depot repair center we have other working PCs that we can swap in known good parts or try a part in a known good PC.

That's the current state of the art in PC repair. That and techs that use their knowledge and Google to see what else pops up.

-> Not long ago you used to repair almost every part but when optical drives DVDRW for example hit 20 bucks for the desktop, repair is not cost effective. Would you pay to fix a 20 buck drive? That is the one hour of 100 bucks plus parts or would you want to pay 20 bucks?

The only ARM based laptops I saw were at most 15 inches and ran ChromeOS.

If you can stop ranting, then we can begin the search. At the office we have Dells, Asus, and the last few good HPs. After HP burned me on a 3 month old laptop, my last HP.