I had a chromebook for about a year. I tried to make it my main laptop. I really did. But online only apps just don't work for me (I'm not always close enough to an internet connection). The native apps weren't usable enough, and often froze the whole desktop. Crouton, while cool, is flaky. I never did get audio working on it, and it also froze the system once or twice a day. And the lack of local storage became problematic. I could plug in a USB flash drive, but some stuff HAS to be on the main drive, and shuffling things around is a pain, especially on their file manager (which is SLOW, although not quite as horrible as Mac's file management).
I gave it to my dad, who just loves it! He uses it for his email, browsing, document editing, photos, and videos.
If that's all you do, then Chromebook is the system for you.
That's interesting, and seems like a direct opposite for the experience I have with my Asus 13 inches chromebook. It is now my main laptop, I use it for days and it never freezes.
I have crouton on it and this comment was typed in firefox on crouton. Whenever I need to, I switch to Chrome OS to use Chrome. I had problem with getting audio to work in the beginning but to be fair that was around the same time I really didn't know how to switch between Crouton and Chrome OS.
It would do with more storage but I have a 32gig sd card in it which gives me a little more mileage than depending only on the internal storage.
Honestly the only REAL work I do on it is learning Javascript even though I got it specifically to learn PHP but things seem to require a lot of tweaking when installing PHP and even setting up ur webserver that I gave up and decided to learn Javascript, which only requires a browser. But I'm sure that's my problem with Linux and not Chromebook.
I have never had an "Ultrabook" before so I really enjoy the sleek nature of this and I don't think I'm going to ever buy any laptop bigger than this ever and the all day battery life makes it awesome.
Apart from the usage above, everything else is like your dad's though. Maybe crouton may have jx gotten better since your experience
I gave it to my dad, who just loves it! He uses it for his email, browsing, document editing, photos, and videos.
If that's all you do, then Chromebook is the system for you.