Oh, certainly. Steam works, I just wished it loaded a little faster at startup.
I haven't experienced the incremental downloading; I know that when I tried the trial version of World of Warcraft it downloaded a small part of the game and then downloaded the rest as you played (why they haven't implemented that with the main client for paid subscribers is absolutely mystifying to me). But other than that, Impulse works the same way as Steam: download and install the client, log in, and click a game to install/play. Even better, you can play a game without having to run the client first.

Fantastic post. Perfectly summarizes my views, as well.

I meant friend in the loosest possible sense of the word. Had a run in with Impulse several months ago where two of their moderators including her followed me here. T'was rather amusing. Small company with a small minded mentality.

The really sad thing is, the best game on Impulse's current sale is Namco's Pac-Man.
Impulse (on other forms) exists for a long time and as they try to say, more than Steam, yet they can't get license to sell games that Steam, D2D, GG, Getgamesgo, get and sell. So either they are lying or they need to hire someone else to deal with publishers because the current one sucks ass.
And yes, bitching about Steam doesn't help at all. Or lying about no DRM when the games require activation through impulse...
Anyway, I might get the pac-man game.

I do find it amusing that they always jump up and announce that they were first to the market, ahead of Steam. I guess I'm not used to seeing people essentially gloat over being lapped. :)

I figured that after I posted my reply, but I was too lazy to go back and change it. I can't remember her name, but man she was psychotic. I ended up resolving it with one of the bigwigs, and the woman told me she'd been let go and had victimized several individuals.
Like I said, I've bought one thing outside of the store credit I was given, and I believe that can be redownloaded via EA's downloader (it was Dragon Age: Awakenings) in case they go under, so I'm not too concerned.
Either way, they need to straighten their stuff out if they want to survive, I reckon.

I had all trust about Stardock's projects about DRMs, their gamer's bill of right and in the early days, but it seems they turned their back in order to compete with steam and created their reactor crap, the last game I bought there was Elemental and I'm probably not getting anything more from them unless they really make something fantastic, I just feel that Impulse is another rent-game platform but where steam may sell "rentwares" it has at least a large catalogue and make a way more sales to make you feel your rental is quite worth your bucks.

An this is where Impulse THQ Pack is different from Steam's THQ Pack offer, fasten your seatbelts folks:
STEAM
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Company of Heroes Gold
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Full Spectrum Warrior
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
Metro 2033
Red Faction I
Red Faction II
Red Faction III: Guerilla
Saints Row 2
STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl
Titan Quest
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Gold
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Dark Crusade
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Soulstorm
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II Chaos Rising
World of Zoo
Impulse
-----------
Company of Heroes Gold
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
Full Spectrum Warrior
Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
Red Faction I
Red Faction II
Red Faction III: Guerrilla
STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Titan Quest
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Gold
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Dark Crusade
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War I Soulstorm
World of Zoo
Steam doesn't have Supreme Commander but it does give you more for the same price.

I got all the Sins of a Solar Empire games via impulse and they all work fine.
They have a strange cd-key policy though that means you are going to want to WRITE down the Keys.

I use to like Impulse once, but they really do suck now. From their POS install/download system to their worthless says I could care less about, meanwhile I made a ton of good purchases at Steams summer sale. Its sad Impulse cant compete with even some little company in Sweden, at least i think its Sweden (GamersGate) I have more games purchased from them I got at great prices.
But the real problem is the issues I've had, I did get Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2 from them, mostly because I had some nice coupons fall into my lap and got great deals on the preorder for them, but I've had alot of problems. Firstly Patches had a hard time installing on them. They wouldnt connect to the Bioware service because of something wrong with the System Service that gets installed, fortunately I found a fan solution.
They are really late on patches, and lazy about it too, I got Avatar the game from them and it was missing a patch released months ago, and at first they said autopatching worked fine for them so they didnt bother updating it, then other people complained and they finally relented, though it still took a few weeks for them to get it out.
And most recently, I had bought Hearts of Iron 3 and the DLC from them, at a great price and recently I got the expansion from them for it, and the DLC doesnt work anymore, only this time they havent even bothered to answer me.
Between all that, im fed up with impulse and dont plan to patronage them again, Im sticking with GOG, Steam and GamersGate from now on.

Everyone crapping on impulse, I want to try it too! :D Kidding. Well, one thing they do seem to have going for them is Elemental. That game looks to be promising. I haven't pre-ordered it, but I really want to see the final release product.

No one complains about the quality of their games, well except Demigod that was a collection of broken promises and poor execution. It's the quality of their service thats the issue. When Impulse was small they were able to get away with this and to be honest with less demand they probably were paragon's of customer service but it's clearly grown beyond their capacity to service properly. Now Steam can get away with that because they are so massive if an entire community of gamers suddenly boycotted them Gabe wouldn't even look up from his waffle tray. Stardock on the other hand are trying to grow their market penetration and every complaint is damaging to them, they are just too arrogant to realize that.

I suppose so. To compete with Steam it appears that they need something like SteamWorks, and that's why Elemental is important, not only for the game itselt, but because it will be be an Reactor game. Reactor may give them more leverage with the publishers.

Unfortunately for Stardock, Elemental is far more niche than HL2 (aka. the foundation of Steam's success) was. TBS just don't sell as well as FPS. Additionally Valve managed to grab the big TBS game: Civ V.
Elemental really needs to blow Civ V out of the water in the reviews for it to have a noticable impact.