Chromebooks just run a browser. Windows runs a browser and other things. Even if there aren't that many other things, your comment is fundamentally wrong.
but can it on Surface/Windows RT? I haven't checked back in on that for a few months, but my understanding is that they still won't let you run JIT compiled code unless you're built into the system -- aka Internet Explorer 10 or the CLR.
Firefox and Chrome will have Metro versions on x86, but will have to interpret JavaScript under Windows RT, and V8 doesn't have an interpreted mode.
Too bad the Surface currently for pre-order is ARM and thus runs Windows RT. An x86 version with Windows 8 should come later, but will likely be more expensive. Chrome won't run on RT unless it is in the Microsoft store.
So you can run them they'll just be slow? And could Chrome Frame be modified to run Chrome apps in IE at full speed?
Edit: just to be clear, without VirtualAlloc() and VirtualProtect(), you can't really run any JIT. No LuaJIT, no PyPy, no Java. No Scala, Clojure, or jRuby either.
It may be possible, Google may opt to release Chrome on it (or someone may port Chromium) but the lack of an optimizing runtime will probably make it suck when compared to IE.
Chrome could use the IE10 JavaScript engine presumably (depending on how easy it is to hook native APIs back into the rendering engine from JavaScript).
The comment you replied to said "Chromebooks just run a browser. Windows runs a browser and other things." The fact that Chrome (and Firefox) can run apps doesn't change that.
