Popular FUD about Chromebooks has it that you can't do anything with them if they're not on the Internet. Not true ! You can write in Google Docs, run AutoCAD, or respond to your Gmail messages and far, far more. There are literally hundreds of Chrome off-line applications.

What there hasn't been many of are apps designed to run outside Chromebook's Web browser interface except for Chrome's Desktop apps that can both run off-line and outside the browser window. Until now.

Recently Google started making it possible to run Android apps on Chromebooks . For now, there are only four applications, but developers looking into the code have already found that porting their applications to Android on Chrome will require almost no effort.

With over a million Android apps waiting in the wings, Chromebooks are about to become even more of a true rival to Windows PCs.