Like many “irrational” pricing schemes, it can be explained with price discrimination.
If you’re cost sensitive, you upgrade yourself.
If you’re paying an overworked IT department to buy laptops, you pay the premium to Dell instead of hiring an employee to deal with upgrades like this, and then hire another person to scream at multiple people (instead of one) when all the laptops start BSODing because of some Microsoft update combined with Murphy’s Law.
If you’re cost sensitive, you upgrade yourself.
If you’re paying an overworked IT department to buy laptops, you pay the premium to Dell instead of hiring an employee to deal with upgrades like this, and then hire another person to scream at multiple people (instead of one) when all the laptops start BSODing because of some Microsoft update combined with Murphy’s Law.