Did you hear that collective nerdgasm 10 minutes ago? Yeah, that was because of a new rumor that Google Chrome OS will be available for download soon. TechCrunch, while vague about whether this will be an alpha release (i.e. download from source and proceed at your own risk) or a legitimate beta release, says that you will be able to download it within the next week.
Of course, as with any OS, driver support will be weak at first -- presumably, Google has been talking to big hardware vendors to get them to support their OS. Furthermore, if they release the source, any other smaller developers will be able to get their hardware supported as well. TechCrunch says that Chrome OS may launch with support for ASUS's EEE PC netbooks.
Google has said that the Chrome OS will boot directly into a browser, but they haven't released any more details about features, let alone screenshots. It is based off of a Linux Kernel, so some features will be predictable, but you can expect a full Google re-skinning.
You can read the TechCrunch post here, and the original Google blog post announcing Chrome OS here.
