If you go to gdgt you can download compiled version of Chrome OS pre-release in shape of virtual machine.
Don’t expect too much, since it’s quite unstable, slow and it freezes a lot. If I didn’t miss anything it’s just Chrome browser that boots on it’s own. So, it’s far from XP/Vista/7 killer for now.
So what would you rather do? Read more about Crome OS or try for yourself?
Here are quick instructions for running Chrome OS in VirtualBox:
- Download and install VirtualBox or upgrade to latest version if you have it installed. If you have VMware, even better.
- Download Chrome OS VMware image (don’t bother with VirtualBox image, it doesn’t work for many and it didn’t work for me).
- Create new machine and
- attach existing VMDK image as primary hard drive,
- give it 1 GB of RAM,
- leave network as it is (NAT),
- give video card more RAM, I simply went with max - 128 MB.
- Boot it! It should be up in seconds.
- Login with Google Account.
- If you get “wrong password” error message, remember that you have US keyboard!
- If you get “no network” error message, turn network off/on, reboot and it will eventually start working.