Not a sales person, but a former technician who is now a product owner and deals with this daily.
Your role is to find the best product that meets your requirements during your RFP. If products B and C are comparable or better than product A, a good procurement team can negotiate pricing. Also, nothing is a done deal until the MSA and SOWs are agreed to and signed. I’ve had a situation where product A would fall through due to legal disagreements, so we went with product B.
During my last RFP when we were releasing a vendor towards the end, they came back with a counter proposal that gave us the first 6-months of a 36-month contract for free, bringing the price to be competitive with the other vendors.
Let the process play out. Your role is to help choose the best product for the company, it’s your purchasing team role to handle the money aspect. These B2B reps understand this process too and are happy as long as you’re still engaging with them at least.
Know this isn’t the answer/perspective you were searching for, but I felt the same as you during my first RFP and felt bad for the vendors. Now they’ve become great network opportunities and I have more future job prospects lined up in the event I’m ready to make a move.
At this point I’d take the malicious compliance route. Make sure you have it documented in a form of writing that shows he is refusing to upgrade his system. Send him an email confirming you the new laptop on standby and would like to know when he’d like to swap it out, he’ll obviously tell you to pound sand. If anything happens, it’s not on you. If you’re worried about getting fired, then it’s not worth it to pursue.