Re: On the subject of the hardware specs.
Surely the requirements and processes for Chromebooks are exactly the same as those for Linux, as that's what Chromeos is?
If the processor is fast enough to keep up with a video playing, if there's easy external storage (e.g. micro-SD or USB), and there's enough memory to avoid regular thrashing then for most people that's going to be good enough.
Certainly is for me, for the portable sofa-surfing machine... sure, it gets a bit slow trying to use the Gimp on large images in 16 bit/colour mode, and I wouldn't care to use it OCR a thousand page novel in one go, but it's quite happy doing 2-d CAD and software development, LaTeX book authoring and Libre Office tasks. For the heavy lifting, there's an older but still operational laptop with a couple of spinny discs in and a decent amount of memory which spends most of its time being a file server.
A Chromebook is a lightweight commodity laptop with a decent screen and a good battery life. I prefer to use a different OS, that's all. My only complaint is that they took away the bloody delete key...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
