The information comes from someone who claims to work for a parts supplier for Acer laptops. This informant says that Google visited and showed off a developer beta of Chrome OS.
The Google reps installed Chrome on an Acer Extensa 4620Z laptop. The installation took about 10 minutes, requiring a single restart, and a still-under-progress install wizard asks users to input some basic information during initial set up. According to the informant, Chrome OS was very fast, and a reboot took just 25 seconds.
At the bottom of the page there is a button in the "Chrome Bar" at the bottom of the home screen that brings up the the main menu, which provides access to the programs and directory. Chrome essentially works in "Brower" or "Exploration" modes. Browsing lets you scan through the OS as you would in Windows, while exploring uses search (big surprise) to find what you want.
According to the informant, the Chrome bar can be hidden and quickly retrieved with keyboard shortcuts. He also noted the presence of a clock, re-sizable desktop icons, Linux roots of the OS, and some similarities to what we've seen in the Windows 7.
On the way out the door, he took some screen shots. You can see them here.
It's a shame that Google hasn't provided more information about the OS itself, but hey, we're more than a year from launch. Until then, we'll take what we can get.
