This demo could even be considered somewhat of a stress test, because it incorporates most of the available graphical enhancement mods for SS2. The GOG release, out of the "box", will be less resource-intensive.

correct.

I'm playing System Shock 2 on my AMD netbook:

http://ca.asus.com/en/Eee/Eee_PC/Eee_PC_1225B/#specifications

I've got the 1.65 Ghz CPU (and accompanying AMD 6320 GPU), 4 gigs of Ram, but I replaced the stock hard drive with a SSD.

Runs just fine, and I'm having a huge blast!

Actually REbirth, 400, and STUP work quite nicely on my atom netbook.

Then again the inventory gui overlay occasionally whites out and i have ot esc the ngo back to game to make it better, but othe rthan the very rare crash. Especially given I'm on linux running this in WINE with an intel graphics chipset. I consider myself astoundingly lucky.

the whiteouts are a known issue (crappy intel drivers) - you can solve it by running in the DX6 safemode, but this will reduce your performance.

SS2 is still a Windows game, so DosBOX doesn't help the least. And again - my laptop is a weak one by modern standards, it has integrated graphics and still the game runs very fine. Have you actually tried it on your netbook?