Is the hardware really that much of a loss leader? I just poked around a bit and found plenty of 8GB i5 Windows laptops selling for exactly the same price as eq

Is the hardware really that much of a loss leader? I just poked around a bit and found plenty of 8GB i5 Windows laptops selling for exactly the same price as equivalent ChromeOS laptops. And that isn't even taking the whole second hand market into account. You can pick up a very nice used X series Thinkpad for the same price as a new Chromebook.