That display out will be hard to match with an old optiplex or laptop, but I agree, the pricing is getting less absurdly low and more just moderately low.
To be fair, I'm guessing the majority of Pi's are used headless anyway. Plus even the older Optiplexes have DVI, which is just HDMI without the audio or fancy stuff like ARC. Won't be getting 4K or anything, but still a very good video output and IMO adequate for almost all use cases.
I'm betting a decent amount of them are used as media PCs. The x265 decoding, 4kx60hz output, 2x speed ram and better wifi are much appreciated for that application.
It’s definitely worth thinking about your use case and whether a second hand mini-pc of some sort is a better option. Along with the Pi itself many people are probably going to need a new case and quite possibly a power adapter too given the new power profile. An older PC where that’s taken care off, and where you probably have a 120GB SSD included, could be the better option for some people.
Because it's what they will buy, it's what I'll buy. And it suits their argument. Calling people out for not reading the article when they are quoting a price from the article is silly though.
That being said, I don't really buy the comparison between the optiflex and the pi. It's like saying you can buy a perfectly good Geo metro as opposed to building a kit bike.