I am now waiting on the completion of the single biggest thing I have ever tried to download: Half-Life 2. It’ll probably be at least 3-4 gigs of data transferred, to meet the ~8 gig install size, but at this rate it should be done by morning.
Normally, given the option, I prefer to get copies of software on actual physical media instead of downloading them. In this case though, there is a difference: the CD version apparently still has the CD-in-drive check on startup. Even though the downloadable version obviously doesn’t. Don’t bother trying to reason it out; it’s apparently because of Orders From Above and nothing else… There’s also been the what-happens-if-I-lose-it concern, but they’ve actually included the ability to burn backup copies to DVD/CD.
The whole online activation requirement for HL2 has been a bit controversial, but at least it’s a one-time-only thing for the single-player game. (Multiplayer always has to do a key check, as is standard nowadays.) It has been effective, though: they avoided having any pre-release or zero-day leaks of pirated copies of the whole game, unlike nearly every other big title to come out recently.
Hopefully my system is even capable of running it well. I technically meet all of the specs, except that my FSB is stuck at 266MHz, which is a bit lacking compared to the effective 800MHz you can get on recent motherboards. It should be good enough with some options turned down, at least.