Let me just say right off the bat that I like Chromebooks and think they're fantastic for education in particular (combined with GSuite). But that being said,

Let me just say right off the bat that I like Chromebooks and think they're fantastic for education in particular (combined with GSuite). But that being said, Chromebooks don't scale with better hardware very well. You can spend $250-350 and get 90% of the experience, and a very good experience at that. If you spend three times more you'll get more memory for Chrome and slightly more responsive tabs but hardly blows your socks off. Microsoft likely aren't shaking in their boots because of a $600-900 Chromebook. If anything Android emulation is the real "killer app" since it massively expands a Chromebook's capabilities, including running Microsoft's own Android-Office apps.