I know the required specs for this game must be really low, but I was wondering whether a netbook would be able to run it okay?

I'm thinking of getting one of the new asus or acer ones and it would be awesome to play quake live on it. 

If you mean notebook, then definitely. Notebooks aren't that much inferior to desktops in terms of gaming potential.

Yeah, assuming you mean notebook, a new one will run it no problem. It should have no trouble running anything 2 years old or more, unless it is a super super super cheap crappy laptop.

Well I meant one of those ultra portable laptops like the Asus Eee - I think some people call them netbooks.

System requirements shouldn't be much higher than Q3 (except for ram since it's a browser game) so pretty much any computer should be able to run it.
Q3 needed a Pentium II processor 223 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 8 mb video card.

YES, YES THEY CAN!!!

Yeah, I'm running Quake Live in XP on my Macbook, which doesn't even have a real 3D card and it works great. You shouldn't have any problems.

Quake Live does use quite a bit more power than Quake 3, but Quake 3 is really old.  Disappointed that my rig gets framerate drops often in Quake Live, it's really inefficiently programmed.