I was highly skeptical, but having just tried it out on a mediocre laptop I am nothing but impressed. I played a few games, Fear 2 and Lego Harry Potter and they ran really well with no noticeable lag. There is a slight amount, but it was very minimal for me, I was able to enjoy both of the games easily. These are games that would never run on this laptop to begin with, especially with the graphical settings configured as such.
My only concern is the games you buy are only available until 2013, that is probably the biggest hiccup with the service, I'm hoping if enough people get on board with it and it proves to be as good as I've experienced in the long run, maybe this is where PC gaming goes (at least partially, there is strong value in installing a game locally of course, editing, etc), I love it, the potentiality of no longer needing 3,000 dollar gaming rigs every couple of years just to play a handful of games I might be interested in. Renting a game for full price however, does leave a bad taste in my mouth, I've only played demos up to this point or spectated other games (awesome feature).

No thanks. I don't want any part of it. Full control over games/gaming rigs and actually owning games ftw.

Was your laptop connected wirelessly?

Meh. I like keyboard and mouse controls for PC gaming's future. And I also don't like relying on the "magic cloud" that OnLive created.

See this thread or this thread

Wait until your full price games expire and the rental fees kick in. You'll just buy a better system instead.
Either that or you're an idiot. But then you can string coherent sentences together so you can't be dumb enough to think that spending that much money on a service is better than just having the hardware yourself.

We can all discuss this forever...
I only want to ask you one question... Whats with the $3000 gaming rig every couple of years bullshit? Explain me that first, then we can discuss the other subjects.

And gaming PCs generally don't last half a decade no matter how high you go. For one, there's bound to be one or two DirectX or OpenGL revisions in that timeframe, then games to take advantage of them.
I spent US$1450 on my desktop two-and-a-half years ago. Upgrades have pushed that to around $1770. Even then, I feel like I spent way too much money on it, given that the same system would now only get me $600 if I'm lucky.
Nevertheless, for something 2.5 years old, it's still holding out pretty well, overclocked Q6600 and 8800 GT and all. I'll probably upgrade the 8800 GT next, but have yet to find a suitable upgrade candidate. (GTX 470/480 aren't it, and ATI's drivers on other systems have left me nonplussed.)
As for OnLive itself? No way! I like mods, I like owning everything, I hate the "rely on someone else's infrastructure and your Internet connection entirely" approach to cloud computing, and I hate subscription fees! (Even worse is that you have to "buy" games with OnLive, but you still have to pay the subscription-and if it expires, you have to re-"buy" all those games again! Kotick would be impressed by that sort of moneygrubbery...) The cost will eventually add up to a new PC + games, by which point you have...nothing, because you blew it all on an OnLive subscription!
StreamMyGame may have its quirks and still relies on external servers for account authentication, but at least it lets me use my own games on my own hardware.

Which is exactly why there's no point in getting bleeding edge hardware. Ever. If you get a system good enough to max out current games then it should last you almost as long as a bleeding edge rig would and at a fraction of the cost.

I think it's more in the hundreds than thousands. If you buy a rig that's half a year behind the spearhead, it should suffice for at least a year or two. I got mine for $200 (discount buy, $500 originally) and Assassins Creed 2 is maxed, and it and all other games (eg. DA:O, X3, E:TW) work like a charm.

I spent about €1000 on my PC built from scratch and being a little extravagant with regards to monitor and HDD's. That was 3 years ago. At most all I need is a graphics card upgrade and I am good to go for another 2 years at least. Despite how impressive i7 is, Core is still more than enough for gaming.

I just got into the Founding Members program, so you'll hear my impressions soon...

I spent ~1,300 euros getting my ASUS G71G laptop, last August. Almost a year now, and I've never had trouble playing any game at 1400*900. Left 4 Dead 1/2, Team Fortress 2, WoW, SC2, CS:S, Crysis, Medieval 2 Total War, Company of Heroes, Witcher, Mass Effect 1/2, Penumbra, you name it. I hate it when people bash PC gaming because you "must" upgrade your system.
If my laptop has lasted this long, I'm sure your gaming rig costing $3000 will last a lot longer. If you get the parts that it, not pay for brands and other crap.
The only upgrade that I will ever make for this laptop, is get an additional 2GB DDR2 RAM (during this summer, I hope, I'm kind of short on money), so that I would fill all my RAM slots, and have a total of 6GB. And, maybe a dedicated sound card, because I have sort of a hobby, I love to make music in Ableton and FL Studio and also DJ occasionally, and a dedicated sound card is needed for more complex sounds (that have lots of compressors, delayers, verb-ers and other stuff).
And I hate when I have to rely on a shitty DRM to play my games. Therefore, I love GOG. :)

Most PC games today are console gaming my 3 year old rig is more than able to play all of them at 1980x1200 with nearly everything to max, and even three year ago it din't cost me 3'000, heck even the new one I bought today on which I gone ballistic on some parts didn't cost me that much.
And honestly if you want to spare money why don't you buy a console ? honestly most today PC games are console port anyway, console are rather cheap and with one you won't have to worry about upgrades anymore. (and given the ridiculous pricing of OnLive it will probably be a lot cheaper :-) .)
How ? if it works and become popular enough it could well be the death sentence of PC gaming, no piracy, consumers are at the complete mercy of the rights holders, easy to implement/impose pay per play pricing scheme, user are forced to pay for the service forever if they don't want to lose all their games, etc... with something like that available who will want to release any games on PC anymore ?
For me OnLive is a nightmare come true, the most abusive and consumer unfriendly DRM scheme ever thought of. The day OnLive or other similar streaming service become the only way to game is the day I will have to find another hobby.