http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343717,00.asp

Don't know if this has been posted yet, but I thought some of you might be interested in checking it out.  Basically, this company plans to implement a game hosting service that would let anyone with any hardware (laptops, computers - regardless of GPU/CPU power ideally) play major game titles.  Essentially, you are playing the game but the actual game rendering and processing is done online through their servers and all you have to process is the video stream.  According to another news article I read, they are able to get the lag time between the controls to the display to be around a millisecond. 

This could be pretty cool if the execution is effective.  Their hope is to drive-out consoles and the need to constantly replace computer hardware that is capable of playing top-of-the-line graphically intense games like Crysis.

edit:  After thinking about it for some more, I am pretty skeptical.  It sounds like a good idea, but it has so many issues to overcome - the strain on ISPs would be tremendous, and the amount of bandwidth needed to run full HD video seamlessly would be unreal.  I'm really interested in seeing how effective this is considering this is a pretty basic issue that they'd have to overcome.  Not a lot of people may like the idea of not owning the game themselves and only being able to play it when connected to the internet (as fast internet connection at that).  Of course this could be a viable alternative for people that want to play some light gaming without having to replace their hardware.

I agree.  I think in a sense this technology is a little ahead of its time.  The current infrastructure to be able to handle a ton of users playing these intense games simultaneously is a little bold.  I think that regardless though, this is a trend in the direction things will go in years to come.  Eventually, we may see something like this as the standard as we move more towards internet based .. everything.  Like you said though, I will try to get into a beta release if they release it to random people in the public. 

A big part of being a PC gamer involves a lot of the nostalgia that you said.  Really, it's something I would miss too.  Even though in a lot of ways PC gaming is declining with piracy about amongst other things, I feel like it's a cool little niche to be in and well worth all the trouble.  A system like this would be a completely different world to be in as a gamer and I don't know how I would receive it.