You don’t have to buy a brand new laptop to use Chrome OS; you can now easily convert your old laptop or PC into a powerful Chromebook. I did this for a Dell Mini and a Dell laptop that I bought in 2009. Those two devices were collecting dust and were destined for freecycling, because modern operating systems and desktop environments like Unity, Plasma, and Gnome won’t run on them.
If you have an old system lying around, you can easily convert it into a Chromebook. You can also dual-boot your laptop with Chrome OS, so you get the best of both worlds.