OnLive is a new gaming service created by technology businessman Steve Pearlman (WebTV, QuickTime), and offers consumers the ability to play the top video games from every system on any computer, PC, Mac or even over your TV via a broadband connection and OnLive Microconsole.
In theory this is brilliant, as one of the reasons I seldom play PC games any longer is because each new game uses a new graphics card, and to really get the best out of the game you have to spend $400 plus on the latest/greatest video card and another $1000 on a computer that can handle it.
On the other hand playing Xbox 360 and PS3 games can be just as costly, especially since the major game distributors are trying to increase revenues by forcing players to buy a copy of the game instead of renting or playing it via OnLive and other similar services by limiting content on rented games without "special" codes to unlock the "fun."
The beta test has been going on for a couple months now, and a lot has been said of OnLive, and not all of it is good. First and foremost on the negative side is the lag, thanks to the major internet providers (Comcast, AT&T;, etc...) the prices and speeds of U.S. broadband connections will slowly go up over a great number of years, instead of having a 100mb mandate the FCC and our government was trying to get passed by 2016.
Now if that happened OnLive would have a lot less lag problems, which in the end will probably kill the viability of this service.
Another down factor is that the graphics aren't great, only 1280x720, and compared to computer games it isn't even close, which was suppose to be one of the selling points of the OnLive service.
If however you are all about playing games on your laptop, or probably eventually on your iPad or HP Slate or similar device in the future, OnLive might be worth it.
Until then hardcore platform gamers and computer gaming enthusiasts are recommended to stay the path on your current set-up until the kinks can be worked out of OnLive and broadband speeds here in the States can catch up with innovation.