If you know what you're walking into, seems ok for the price to me.
Basically, it's Securom. You're given unique serial codes to activate with, and can authorise up to 5 PCs. You can also download a deauthorisation tool to remove installations when you need.
The biggest downfall is you can't redownload after a year, but contrary to what the Wikipedia page says, you CAN backup by copying the games in the download folder to an external drive.
I assume that if you keep a backup and your serial codes, you can re-activate via the servers as many times as you like as long as you deauthorise sometimes. It definitely states on the EA store's site that if the servers were to cease existence, they would release patches to disable the DRM.
I can live with that for the price, since I paid 7 times it to put up with worse DRM in Bioshock.

If you can back the games up and you can play them offline after they've been activated (which I assume would be automatic given that they're purchased online) then that doesn't sound so bad to me.
What I read was that the client was required at all times (like Steam), but unlike Steam the client has no offline mode and no backup facility. Meaning that when the games are no longer available for re-download they last only as long as they remain installed on your machine.
I've emailed them for clarification. Apparently I can expect a response in 24hrs, which I can only assume means Monday. So we'll have to see. If you're interested, I'll let you know what they have to say about it.
And yes, the DVD version of Bioshock was basically just a trojan virus. My AV recognised it as such, which is one of the reasons why I've stuck with it since.

Yeah, I'd be interested in hearing what they say. Hmm, maybe it's true about the client, but when my files are downloaded I may try installing and activating directly from the downloaded files rather than through the client, see if that circumvents it (another forum I've read suggests you can do this).

I think you can't do that,if you downloaded your games via EA DM.
Your serials belongs to your EA account.Before you want to download the game,you have to insert the keycode.And every time you start your game,the DM will start too (just like the Steam client)

The biggest downfall is you can't redownload after a year, but contrary to what the Wikipedia page says, you CAN backup by copying the games in the download folder to an external drive.
Really? The first game I bought via the EA store was well over a year ago and it still gives me the option to redownload it. And no, I didn't have to pay for any extra "download time". So maybe that limit is a US/UK only thing?

I don't know why you'd do that, seeing as people don't really like the EA DM, but I think it probably depends on the game.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/319973.page
only works in UK. :(

Any UK people that can do this for me? That is cool, never played Mirror's Edge.

If you give me a hint what your email is, I'll give it a go. Just on the EA page now, but it's dead slow at the moment so won't know if it still works for a couple of minutes (added 2 games to cart, need to add third).
Edit: nope, no longer works!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Mirror's Edge from D2D is giftable.

That moved me to tears like Revenge of the Sith never did. :'(
There seems to be lots of misinformation about the EA downloader. I eventually downloaded Mass Effect and Dead Space. After download completion, the downloader has to extract the files. After it's done this, you can copy these extracted files for backup.
With ME, I copied the files to my Document folder, and hit setup. It prompted me to input my serial (similar to Call of Duty, CoD 2, BF2 etc) and then installed. After install, it appeared as a to "Play" game in the EA downloader, but also my Games explorer folder in Vista. It hasn't created a path in my Start Menu, but then again neither did physical retails of Mirror's Edge and Tomb Raider Anniversary. I didn't get a prompt at the end to activate online via a server in the way Bioshock asked me to.
With DS, I decided to install via the EA downloader. I wasn't prompted for a serial or activation at the end. Perhaps activation info was sent via the downloader because I had it running during both installs, but there were no indications it was doing this. Again, nothing in program menu but appears in Games explorer.
Both games play without the EA downloader running. All in all, pretty painless and I'm happy. Still against DRM, but this I can live with for the price.

If you rename the EADM directories, you can even run games that want the client running without it actually running. That's exactly what I did for Spore as it cut the loading time in half.

Anyone played C&C RA3 and SimCity™ Societies ? Are they good?