If you have a windows desktop on your lan, using RDP via the chromebook does okay in a pinch... when I used mine, I'd typically have several SSH windows, and an RDP connection open. Worked really well for me. Though I really wanted VPN, and the ability to run VMs, so broke down and bought a new MBP (my prior one was stolen).
It's basically just a web browser with some tweaks for convenient offline Google Docs. You can unlock a full shell and download some decent editors (Caret is one that I've used), if you want to do JS or Python development. Unfortunately the third-party package manager ("chromebrew") does not have a very robust offering, so you're pretty limited in what you're able to do. You can try building binaries yourself but you'll need to build your toolchain as well.
I also have a cheap, late 2012 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor and 2GB RAM, the kind the reviewers like to get down on as horribly underpowered. But over time updates have improved the performance and at this point it's really fine.
They're like fairly-reliable burner laptops. They handle most of the day-to-day things you would ever need a laptop for, but don't leave you worrying that much about price if it were stolen or damaged.
Which is probably why they're so popular with schools. I no longer own one but when I did it was my go to for email and basic web stuff.
I have an ARM Samsung and I really like it; great battery life and runs Linux with Crouton. ChromeOS is fine for browing and most document writing I do. My wife wrote a few books on it in Google docs. No problem...
