If you set up bumblebee correctly you should be able to enable and disable the dedicated gpu on the fly if i’m not mistaken. Might still help with long teams meetings.

Thank you. 42k pre-tax for a teacher is abysmal.

Are these numbers before or after taxes?

I remember having bad overheating issues with Linux years ago on an XPS 15 (9560 model if memory serves, so unlike yours no 4k or touch).

The key on mine was to disable the dedicated GPU which I didn’t need anyway. I remember afterwards, mint would run mostly quiet and the battery lasted longer than on the windows partition. If you are interested look up bumblebee on the arch wiki.

Also I know this reply is late, but maybe it helps.

You picked a single sentence in my reply and ignored the rest.

I’d suggest you go use OpenOffice then. Using an essentially 10yr old version of an inherently collaborative software will be a nightmare.

I find this a weird take.

What about security patches? What about updates to document standards? What about technological advancements such as IPv6, 10bit colors, high res displays? What about bugfixes?

Software is complex and office suites are complex by software standards.