I use a Toshiba CB30 - 102 Chromebook and I think it is great. I was persuaded to buy it instead of a Google Nexus tablet and glad I made the choice I did. It has 2 GB of RAM, but boots up much faster than my 4 GB RAM laptop and even than my 8 GB RAM desktop. It also has a 16 GB hard drive so whilst you can store a few files, it is primarily designed for cloud computing via your personal Google account.
I have read some Office files on it, but never made changes to any; as I am not particularly savvy in respect of techy stuff I use my other machines if I have to do that, but for stuff like general web browsing, internet banking, watching Netflix (casting to TV via Chromecast is a piece of cake), doing Amazon or
eBay it is the first device I look for .
Having said all that, I don't think it would be a good choice for a university student to do their work on. The first issue for me is that most universities seem to want work submitted in Word or Excel formats, and whilst others may argue that you can get some type of software that makes using Office easy enough, as a Johnny Average non techy type, that seems to make things a bit more complicated than they have to be. The other issue for me is that the keyboard is somewhat simplified from a normal laptop, which would make writing long pieces of academic work a bit more awkward. I am sure these issues are not insurmountable, but having seen both my kids go through university in the past 5 years, and seen the type of work they do, and having used both types of device myself, I would rather just pay an extra £150 - £200 and get a good conventional laptop, which personally I feel would help them cope a bit better.