Google’s upcoming Chrome Operating System is designed to put the net back into netbooks. It’s basically an operating system built around a web browser. While it will have some offline capabilities that will allow you to do things like watch cached videos and read cached web sites while you’re not near an internet connection, the browser will be the main application. If you want to run an office suite to create and edit documents, Google will suggest Google Docs or other web-based office suites such as Zoho. Want to listen to music? How about Pandora or Lala?

But just because there are no native desktop apps doesn’t mean there won’t be an app launcher. The latest pre-release builds of Google Chrome, compiled by Hexxeh, includes an app launcher that you can open up with the click of a button to launch web apps.

Don’t feel like installing a pre-release copy of Chrome OS just to check it out? No problem. The desktop Chrome browser for Windows packs many of the exact same features that you’ll find in the Chrome-based operating system. And Download Squad’s Lee Mathews notes that you can add a command line switch to Chrome for Windows to add a program launcher. Changing this switch will replace the new tab page with the app launcher.

If you’re worried that this means you won’t be able to load bookmarks, don’t worry. You can still just type into the Omnibox at the top of the app launcher to search your bookmarks or page history. Or you can enter a new URL in the box to open a web site.

chrome app launcher

Via liliputing.com

At Mobile World Congress, Freescale showed off a rather nifty little tablet running Chromium OS. It’s the same device we saw running Android at CES, the i.MX51.

The Chrome Source reports that, though the demo shows input via a mouse and keyboard, the device is capable of touch as they also showed a tablet running some variation of Linux that had capacitive input.

With an integrated webcam and a $200 price tag, the device is likely to turn a lot of heads; especially when you have the likes of Apple and HP selling similar, higher end devices for three times that. Tentative early adopters could decide to try something like this rather than go right for the expensive option.

Chrome OS will make its debut sometime later this year, most likely right in the middle of the holiday season. Now Network World (via Netbooked) has just learned that a business edition of Chrome OS will be launching as well. It will hit in 2011.

There are no hard details on the business edition yet. It is said to feature “more management muscle” (according to a Google software engineer) and a hell of a lot more security. Some Chrome OS netbooks could actually pack a hardware switch that allows you to toggle security functions and run in developer mode.

When not in dev mode, Business Edition Chromebooks will probably be considerably more limited than their civvy cousins. That’s about all we know for now, but stay tuned-this story will be developing for a while.