I've been having so much fun with Dawn of War II, I fired up Steam and tried out the demos to the original, Dawn of War. They turned out to be even more fun, so much so I bought the gold edition. I've never made a Steam purchase before, but the experience was a good one. What I like most about the service is that once you purchase the game, its key is permanently linked to your Steam account. If you uninstall the game, you want always download and install it again later. It also means you can download and play the game on another computer.
I always think of myself as the type of person that needs that physical copy in my grubby little hands. But as less and less shelf space is devoted to PC gaming, it could be that digital purchasing may turn into the only viable method for distributing PC games. At first glance, that seems a shame. But with a service as good and dependable as Steam, perhaps it's not.