[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Steam works very well for me; thanks to it Valve just made HL2 dickhead proof, which is a very good thing IMO. Believe me, HL2 is worth your money, and Steam shouldn't be a problem for you when you're a normal user. The only people Steam causes trouble to is wannabe crackers, because they can't do what they want. But I tell you, from a coder's point of view, all the tools you need exist and there's nothing you can't do with Steam that you could do with the pre-Steam Half-Life !
And HL2 runs very well on slow machines. The Source engine really kicks ass for that. Not only the game deserves your money, but IMO Valve deserves it too.