Don't go yammering about Beta? Although it is a moving target, one version is always called 'stable'.
(2) When I go to Task Manager, I find 10 - 20 instances of chrome.exe. Is that normal? Is it an artifact of PortableApps or is the standalone like that too?
Chrome uses a separate process for each tab.
We're moving to having an "Internet" forum and similar for each category. Firefox will retain its own forum due to it's large popularity. Chrome is much less popular.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!