It's interesting and amusing to read all of the press about Chrome OS as the computing world tries to interpret the meaning of this new OS. A lot of the discussion seems a little misplaced to me.
Here's a thought that occurred to me this week. Instead of thinking of this as a new OS, think of it as the Chrome browser without the OS! It's the answer to this question: If all I use on my computer is the browser, why do I need the rest of the stuff?
Indeed, why fool around with Linux, Mac OS or, heaven help us, Windows, if you only need a browser?
So Chrome OS is an attempt to get rid of most of the OS, not really create a new one.
Now, along the way, it does turn out there are some things you might want to do. They include getting pictures off of your camera to upload and maybe printing a map from Google Maps. So, okay, you need some bits of an OS there. Thus, that's the hard part the Chrome OS project is currently working on.
My experience of installing or re-installing an OS goes something like this. Install the OS. Get security updates. Make sure it has Chrome and Firefox. Make sure it has Flash and that YouTube works! That's it. The user(s) sit down and run the browser, go to Facebook and YouTube. Occasionally they'll use Google or Gmail. Maybe even Yahoo mail. Done.
The most important thing that I don't think a browser-based computer would offer me right now is the key tool I use for programming: A decent terminal. I usually use xterm or the Mac OS Terminal program (I believe it's a descendant of the NeXT Terminal). If a terminal runs in a browser, it has to handle SSH and fast typing. Javascript solutions I've tried weren't adequate. But, things are getting much faster.