mtraun: And yet when I run the game that I downloaded last night it says it's version 1.4.5.1304 ..... not 1.5.
That happened to me too, with my disc version of the game. The menu bar is unreliable. Instead, find witcher.exe in your game directory, right-click it, go to properties, and look for the version there. It should be 1.5 (this has been verified by several people running the GOG version).
Another way to check is by seeing how many extra adventures are included with the game, as several of these were added with the v1.5 patch. Launch the game, choose new game, then choose "new adventures". There should be six or seven adventures in there. Most of those were added with v1.5.
In short: The GOG version is indeed v1.5, even though the game window claims to only be v1.4.5. I think that v1.4.5 is the LAUNCHER version, rather than the game version.