There was a lot of hype around the chrome OS, and I was expecting something spectacular. Very disappointed - not even sure of it qualifies as an "operating system". So this is what Chrome OS is:
1. The loading screen says that it is built using SUSE, but you need to specify Ubuntu in VMWare or VirtualBox to load it.
2. They have stripped down the OS to just the browser, and a little command line interface that does not let you do anything.
3. The start menu is a glorified speed-dial kind of page, which has shortcuts to some web services, such as google calendar, google office, a streaming site called lala, a chess flash game, and some others.
4. If you close the browser, the browser closes and relaunches. Although there are links to try out other browsers, there is no concievable way of downloading and installing them.
5. You don't even get to control or manage any files on your hard disk, everything is based on the notion that everyone would save files only on the cloud.
6. You cannot add custom apps to the speed dial type thingy - whatever it is.
7. Chrome themes and add-ons work, but the whole OS is horribly slow. Have used both Suse, Fedora and a bunch of other distros on virtualisations with similiar settings, and they were much faster, if anyone reading thinks this was because I was using virtualisation.
8. 280 odd MB is waay too much for an OS that is basically an over-glorified browser. No, seriously, there is nothing I could find in the OS beyond the Chrome browser, no matter how hard I looked. I broke it trying to install firefox, but that is as far as I could get. Going into the settings hangs the system.
9. There is one good thing about it though. You get a login screen almost as soon as fast as you can open up a browser, no boot sequence to speak of. Also, you can login from any Chrome OS device, and get basically the same OS - what little is there of it.
Basically: Chrome OS = Chrome+270 odd MB of bloat
Some caps:
The options at the boot screen. Note that this was not the virtualized drive torrent, but the .iso file.
The start menu. Or speed dial. Or whatever it is supposed to be. The only thing distinguishing the browser from the OS. Notice the small and permanent tab on the top left corner.
Trying to install Firefox, thingy broke. Someone who knows Linux better please try this out, I'd love to see Opera or Firefox running on Chrome OS. Then you'll probably have Firefox OS and Opera OS. Even better if someone mails me a link to IEOS.
That is the command line module, you won't even be able to see it till you fool around in the options.
For those wanting to try it out, read this carefully, as it won't work otherwise. Use
this torrent, which is still on the loose. This is the virtualized hard drive with the OS installed. I downloaded the .
iso image as well, which was pulled from the official site (then I found it in Google's cache!). Once you boot in, all you get is a blank screen. I think this has something to do with the Chrome OS running only on solid state drives, but I am not sure on this. You will have to use a virtualization software, burning the iso and booting wont get you past the bootloader screen. You will also have to change your network settings from the default to a bridged connection, or the OS wont go onlne. Login with your google username and password. OR - you can simply download and install chrome, you probably won't notice the difference.
Edit II: The above links are hopefully still valid. It is Chrome built off the source code. Which is pretty easy to compile, and identical to the result.
Chrome OS - screencaps and review
Re: Fake Chrome OS - screencaps and review
Click his link and you will know. 
Linear Mode
