Therapist looking for chromebook replacement; desk top is primary computer.

Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase:

I'm usually pretty cheap about these (current desktop is a basic Dell (dude! I got a dell!) that cost less than $600 from Costco, but if there is something that really hits everything below, and will last a long time, I'm willing to spend.

Are you open to refurbs/used?

I'd prefer not

How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?

Battery life is most important, then performance: It needs to be able to run a vpn, encrypted video conferencing (therapist), and excel (which sounds weird, but my last desktop really struggled with excel).

How important is weight and thinness to you?

Meh.

Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.

N/A

Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.

Needs to be able to run proton VPN, excel (not google sheets), and encrypted video conferencing, preferably all at the same time. That's it.

If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?

Nope

Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?

I'd prefer it to last for a long time, and run well for a long time. I should probably add I'm kind of a klutz, so it might get dropped a couple of times. My tolerance for "running well," is pretty low, up until last summer I was using a PC my friends helped me build in 2011, and I only stopped because it was getting too glitchy to keep my sessions steady, and it made noises like all the mechanicals were breaking down.

Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.

My top three are battery life, privacy, and performance. I really hate bloatware? (Why can't I uninstall the xbox game bar on my PC? I don't play any games, I also don't need the stock ticker or ads on the login page). I'm generally pretty bare bones in what I use it for, I don't game, I don't really do any graphics work (if I do, it's usually in ms paint and ppt, no, I'm not kidding), I don't stream my music. I'd prefer windows OS, because I don't know that I actually want to learn linux, but I can if it's important. My desktop is windows, though, so, idk if that cancels it out.

Honestly, I'm pretty easy. I also know your standard geriatric millennial skills (I've reformatted several times, fucked around with harddrives and ram) and can generally figure things out, so if I need to build a thing, I guess I can do that, but I'd rather not.