I got some ideas about the possible future of the Strip’s hotel inventory by reading this Wired article on Netbooks, which are ultra-cheap, low-performance laptops that are good to connect to the Internet and not do much else:

Netbooks have ended the performance wars. It used to be that when you went to an electronics store to buy a computer, you picked the most powerful one you could afford. Because, who knew? Maybe someday youd need to play a cutting-edge videogame or edit your masterpiece indie flick. For 15 years, the PC industry obliged our what-if paranoia by pushing performance. Intel and AMD tossed out blisteringly fast chips, hard drives went on a terabyte gallop, RAM exploded, and high-end graphics cards let you play Blu-ray movies on your sprawling 17-inch laptop screen. That dream machine could do almost anything.

But heres the catch: Most of the time, we do almost nothing. Our most common tasks—email, Web surfing, watching streamed videos—require very little processing power. Only a few people, like graphic designers and hardcore gamers, actually need heavy-duty hardware. For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems.

What netbook makers have done, in effect, is turn back the clock: Their machines perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago more or less is plenty. "Regular computers are so fast, you really cant tell the difference between 1.6 giga and 2 giga," says Andy Tung, vice president of US sales for MSI, the Taiwanese maker of the Wind netbook. "We can tell the difference between one second and two seconds, but not between 0.0001 and 0.0002 second." For most of todays computing tasks, the biggest performance drags arent inside the machine. They’re outside. Is your Wi-Fi signal strong? Is Twitter down again?

Netbooks are evidence that we now know what personal computers are for.Which is to say, a pretty small list of things that are conducted almost entirely online. This was Asustek’s epiphany. It got laptop prices under $300 by crafting a device that makes absolutely no sense when its not online. Consider: The Eees original flash drive was only 4 gigs. Thats so small you need to host all your pictures, videos, and files online—and install minimal native software—because theres simply no room inside your machine.

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time.

Let’s apply this to the Las Vegas Strip. If you look at the Strip’s hotel inventory, it’s been getting nicer, but also pricier, over the past few years. The average room now has far more amenities than it did ten years ago. It’s bigger, plusher, and much friendlier on the eyes.

The question is, how many people coming to Las Vegas want a mega-suite? Sure, a lot of people will be using these “features” of their room (the equivalent of running Photoshop on a laptop). But many of them will look at them, go “Oh, nice,” and then spend 95% of their waking time outside the room.

This was, traditionally, why Vegas hotel rooms were nothing to write home about. It was a model that served the Strip well for many years.

Of course, there are tons of people who love the new, “feature-heavy” rooms, and are willing to pay for them. It would be short-sighted to neglect this segment of the marketplace. But what about people who don’t want the hotel room equivalent of a computer to play graphics-heavy video games on? What about people who just need a room that (to use an analogy) gives them just enough to be able to check their email and surf the web?

Could upscale casinos offer no-frills rooms for significantly less than their regular ones as the hospitality equivalent of netbooks? It would be a room with no fancy tech, no designer accents, no separate tub and shower. It’s clean, but not stylish. It’s not for people on a romantic trip together–it’s just for folks who need a place to crash for a few hours.

I’m not saying that Bellagio should rip out the Tower Suites and thrown in rows of bunkbeds. But if I was running a Strip casino, I’d want to know exactly what my customers were looking for, and find out if the key to giving them what they wanted might be giving them less.