Google Chrome OS release in next 7 days?

Google Chrome OS, the search giant's web-centric platform for notebooks, netbooks and Smartbooks, is tipped to be arriving sometime within the next seven days.  According to TechCrunch's sources, the release of the new OS – which was announced back in July – is imminent, though there's also talk of patchy driver support.

While Google have been working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, HP, Lenovo, Qualcomm, TI and Toshiba on Chrome OS, there have also been rumors that they've left much of the driver development up to hardware manufacturers.  That likely means that any initial release will only be fully functional on a small subset of machines, with increased support as the platform matures.