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Are there any advantages to running this over Chromium?

The same advantages (and disadvantages) to running any stable build vs. development build.

Some dis-advantages, I guess. Since it's beta, it won't run plugins (yet). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

extensions seem to work fine

I stand corrected.

I have tried a few plugins. One in 4 (flashblock) has worked, the others didn't.