...Like I was...
I foolishly listened to some of the good things about Stardock Impulse and the low price of Titan Quest and Dawn of War - Dark Crusade and bought them and installed Impulse.
Let me tell you Impulse is: SLOW, laborious, ugly, SLOW, unintuitive, SLOW, system hogging, and did I mention SLOW.
The download of the games was straight forward, but the long, long, long verification time and then the install of the game was painful at best.
You are given no option of where to put your game or Impulse.
I tried to Archive the games and that takes forever to take place and your system becomes Impulses until it is over.
I can say without a doubt it was $8.00 wasted because you have to use Impulse and there is NO Instruction on how to run the games without having to use Impulse as others say is doable.
Stay far, far away from thsi mess of a program.
I do not like Steam but Impulse makes Steam look like it is Lightning running on steroids. Impulse is like, well garbage.
I made a mistake in buying the game through Impulse, so please do not make the same mistake yourself. Save yourself a large headache and say, "I pass on Impulse".

And I wanted to buy Supreme Commander eventually... Oh well

I like Impulse. I enjoy Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire and I find download content and patches are simple and it's very easy to get used to.

You enjoy waiting then?

I have bought galactic civilizations II: dread lords and download it with Impulse, the download speed was good and had no trouble installing the game. For me the verification time was pretty fast so maybe you had a special problem. I can agree with you that the backup of the game took a long time but when doing a backup of a steam game it's also a time consuming matter, GOG doesn't have this problem since it doesn't uses DRM. I can't speak for titan quest or dark crusade but i was able to play the game with having to have impulse running in the background, maybe it's because those games have a form of DRM in the form of impulse and GCII doesn't have any. I would say my one game experience with impulse is pretty good but the store does have problems specially in the price difference between games compared to steam, for example in the impulse store Sid Meier's Pirates! cost 30 dollars while in the steam store it's sold by on 10 dollars! a 20 dollar difference! other games also have this price difference so i would advise anyone thinking of buying in the impulse store to do a price check. Anyway personally i only would use Impulse when buying stardock games like GCII and that's it, i'll go steam for my other buys even tough i dislike the steam client.

One look at the Stardock website was enough to tell me I wouldn't like their DD service.

Steam is much better than Impulse. I buy my games from Gamersgate, Steam, and GoG. Other services I've tried just didn't do it for me.

Yes you can. You click on the blue orb in the upper left and choose Preferences. From there you can configure where to put your games. I DLed Titan Quest yesterday and put it on my K drive.
Just start the game like any other. I just use the desktop icon. What problem were you having?
What was slow about it other than the archiving? I found the DL speed was great. I do find it takes a bit of time to start and get itself updated though, but I find the same for Steam.

up down up down left right left right a b

Sorry, I don't understand your post at all, Weclock.

I think he's quoting the Contra 30 lives code....

Still lost me. I don't see the relevance.
Just for posterity, I'm not trying to trumpet Impulse as the best thing since sliced bread, nor do I think everyone has to like it. Whether someone likes it or not is no concern of mine.
But... I was pointing out that what Faithful said is inaccurate. You can designate your games to be DLed to whatever location you want. You can also start the games up as easily as any game you install from a disc, and they don't start any slower. (On a side note, I actually find MEPC, the only game I own through Steam, starts up extremely slowly).
Impulse is slow to start though, there's no arguing about that. But you don't need it running to play your games. And the thing to keep in mind is it's a pretty new service. Hasn't even been up and running for a year yet. So comparisons to Steam aren't entirely fair. From what I understand, Steam was pretty brutal when it first rolled out as well.
There's a lot of room for improvement with Impulse. But the good thing about Stardock is they do actually listen to feedback and will try to add/modify/change things, if at all possible, to make the application better for the user.

If it requires some sort of cryptic code like "click on the blue orb" what kind of crazy marketing is that? that's very much non-user friendly and IMO is not so much of a feature, but a hidden feature.
It's like saying "oh well you can use X gun in this game" but not actually ever being able to find it in the game normally without entering a cheat code.

As I said Impulse is unintuitive. Clicking on a blue pulsing orb, wow! Why would anyone assume that is what you need to do "before" you install a game.
And yes, my system worked in a very halting fashion while Impulse wanted to do anything.
One last thought is that Brad is willing to listen as long as it is within his vision of what should be. He is not willing to allow people direct downloads of games apart from Impulse, ever.
I still know I wasted $8.00 as Impulse is not something I will keep on my computer very long.

Cryptic code? All you need to do is click on the blue Stardock Orb located at the top left of the Impulse screen. Is it intuitive? Probably not, but I'm not arguing whether it's intuitive or a good app. All I'm doing is pointing out that some of the things Faithful says can't be done are incorrect. There's also the help icon at the top right of Impulse if you're having trouble with something.
Can't designate where you want your DL to go? Yes, you can.
Can't start the game without Impulse running? Yes, you can. All you need to do is either go through the Start menu or click on the desktop icon, just like any game you've installed from disc. I don't know what problem Faithful was having, but there's no need to have Impulse running to play your games.
*edit* Was composing reply while Faithful posted.
Faithful: agreed about Brad's attitude sometimes. But what problems were you having getting your game to start up?