Once you’ve got Node, docker, Postgres, redis, an IDE, etc running, the system is out of memory and already chugging before your actual app even opens.
It's massively easier to just give someone a macbook that actually works properly and runs everything you need than to hand out people plastic chromebooks and mess around with remote development environments. Then if required, hire some testers to click around on cheap hardware. But realistically, the users on 2010 laptops aren't the ones paying the companies bills so no one really wants to spend money on them.