For developers, installing Crouton turns the Chromebook into a fantastic portable machine. My Acer c720 has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it, and generally lasts a full day (10-12 hours) between charges.
It's awful. Forget about accelerated graphics from that nice chip - the drivers are proprietary. Oh, and so are the DSP drivers, so no HD decoding. Enjoy pressing Ctl-D every boot; don't mis-type or you'll wipe the drive. The keyboard lacks essentials such as "home", "end", and "delete". The Crouton OS and ChromeOS get into fights sometimes. HDMI is a crapshoot. I never did get VLC to stream the webcam. The finish is about as durable as whitewash. And so on.
If you're a developer reading this thread and considering buying a Chromebook because it looks like a nice machine for the price, PLEASE don't. Do yourself a favor and buy a used thin 'n' light business-class laptop from 2006-8. You'll take a medium hit on battery life and weight, but you will get a comfortable, well-designed, durable, powerful machine for your money.
I agree with your recommendation though, wait and get the Samsung 2 if you want ARM, or any of the other x86 Chromebooks.
EDIT: And you don't need to type Ctrl-D, it just makes it boot quicker when the bootloader is unlocked
That stuff is what "work" means to me, so my (Acer) chromebook is a pretty decent work machine. For bigger stuff I break out the 17" System76 but for travel I take the chromebook.