I'm wondering how these games would potentially run on a netbook/net-top, as I have one connected to my television, and would be much more comfortable playing out there, than hunched over the keyboard in here.
Also, is there any way to play with a gamepad, the controls feel like console controls slapped to a keyboard and mouse.
I think if these two options could be met, I'd have a lot of hours of blissful gaming in front of me.

As far as performance goes, the Netbook Playability Thread indicates that they both run quite well. Gothic II will have frame rate issues in the town and some other high-detail areas if you have the draw distance set to the maximum, but this is a technical issue with the game engine and affects even the most powerful systems.
As for controllers, Gothic II has built-in controller support, but Gothic does not. For Gothic II edit Gothic.ini in the System folder (for Vista/7 go to its VirtualStore location and edit the copy there) and change enableJoystick=0 to enableJoystick=1. I haven't used this myself, so I don't know how many axes etc. it actually supports. For the first game you will need to use Xpadder or the like.

Thanks, I was hoping some type of emulator program existed.

Ive tested Gothic 1 a little on my netbook.
It's a Samsung NC-10.
Works absolutely fine, not issues to speak of.
I can't figure out half the buttons though, finally worked out that to loot you have to press the loot key + forward at the same time, but cannot equip weapons or anything, it's very frustrating.

All actions are done with ctrl+forward or left click+forward. For trading, substitute forward for the direction you want the traded item to move in.
EDIT: the toggle keys involved will depend on your bindings, of course, but ctrl and left click are the defaults.

Runs like a champ on my MSI Wind.