Well apparently its on Direct2Drive but I've never used them so I can't speak to their support & protection schemes. Its also on the Xbox 360 marketplace but unless you happen to have a 360 (or be incredibly excited for it and buy a 360 just to play it), that won't help you much.

I know a lot of girl gamers.
My last girlfriend has played Call of Duty with some low-skill clan. But she is not playing much other games though. She's 25 yo.
My sister - she is 14 yo - is playing a lot. She likes CS:S, Oblivion, WarCraft... but she is not a gamer I can be proud of.
She prefer new games, but she's not fammiliar to old school classics like myself.
I really believe, that I was born in the best era of gaming. I did not completely missed the late 80's cause in communism totality in Czech republic we hadn't much choises. So I know so many classic games like Space Invanders and that stuff...
I came accross of first "3D" era and that.
Opposite of my experiences is my sister which knows only new generations of games with cool full 3D graphics and... really now, not even the best game playability.
... well... this is kinda OT...
I just wanted to say, that in new generation of gamers, there is a lot of girls. At least, in Czech republic... and in my neighbour.

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In my guild in world of warcraft there are a couple of girls

My girlfriend spends almost as much time on her computer as I do on mine. She doesn't game quite as much as I do, but still a lot. Mainly casuals, but she's also very fond of Half-Life and Quake IV.

Heck, I met my last girlfriend in WoW. We broke up after 1 1/2 year but still stay good friends and visit each other when time permits. At least I got her interested into games like Deus Ex or Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Tried Planescape: Torment but while she found it very interesting, she found there was too much text (redding is teh hard!). She claims that reading on her computer screen is annoying, a legitimate complaint, yet she read the four Twilight books that way, so go figure.

I wouldn't want to read books on my computer, but I read plenty of books on my phone. And I think reading in a game is very different from reading a book. I don't mind text-intensive games at all. But then, people are different.

There are a lot of women playing Everquest 2. Probably over a third of the players I met in that game were female.
It's easy to tell, because unlike World of Warcraft's integrated voice chat, EQ2's is well-liked and used with great frequency by the player base.

They still make books on paper? How quaint.
I bought my netbook partially to use as an ebook reader, its pretty much the perfect size and not too heavy.
I could never read stuff on the screen when I had a CRT, my eyes never loved me more than the day I got my first LCD monitor
I just remembered, I got my arse kicked by a girl in Gears Of War 2 a few weeks back, shifty little bugger kept sneaking up behind me and chainsawing me so I kept trying to drop mortar rounds on her

I like books ;) But I do plan on getting a netbook as well.
Speaking of girl gamers: It seems a lot of the gal gamers (bcause honestly...not all are girls) I find it' a unique experience to be playing a game and have a really girly gal on there and she's popping a cap in the head of the enemy at 50 million yards out while talking about what kind of dress she is wearing to a dinner for the evening (For example.) The brutality mixed with the femininity is pretty fascinating. However I don't hear that much: It seems (From my own personal experiance) the really feminine gal gamers seem to be more attracted to MMO's then, say, your typical first person shooter. (then again I don't play a lot of shooters online.)
I guess that is why I've never really had that "OMG girls are PLAYING GAMES!" moment. I tend to play more role playing games and MMO's then FPS and I've always seen a high number of female gamers playing those...sheez since I was a smaller brat on the SNES. I've seen the percentage grow, especially in online games, but they hae always been there.
At least...from what I've experienced in my life.

I rather like my Dell Inspiron Mini 9, no moving parts, light and surprisingly good to type on for someone like me with monster hands.
That is a bizarely compelling mental image

I once knew a girly girl who talked only of dressing pretty pwning noobs in CS — truly the next game aimed at girls after The Sims. She became annoying very fast.

Apparently this discussion is moot, girl gamers are no longer special.
Presumably the same applies to the gay gamers discussion. Now if only someone could declare the brainless multiplayer focussed FPS no longer special...

Yeah I read that... I found the article kind of odd myself. Not sure why... Female gamers may becommon now, but I don't think that means they aren't special. Heck gamers in general are a special breed, male or female. I could go on about how gamers are just a subspecies of the geek/nerd subculture, which is really kind of apart from the culture at large...but hey no one is special anymore so why even try? heh.

1) I am thinking of getting an MSI wind, mainly for the edge to edge keyboard. I'm a writer and I need to be able to touch type..since I have small(ish) hands that keyboard should work.
2) That image above has actually happened to me on a couple of occasions. It's odd, like seeing a marine that can kill you with her pinky but is afraid of spiders. (that is based on a friend of mine, btw. Heh.)