I went for the download so as to not wait. Not having packaging to throw away is a bonus, and I'm not sure the paper manual is necessary either (unless it has a lot of stuff about modding).
My box was evidently opened at the US-Canada customs, and there was a sticky fingerprint on the CD. It's impossible to clean. I managed to copy the game installer to my hard disk, but parts of the CD (the game demos) is unreadable.
So yeah... don't trust the physical world, and go virtual!!!
I was initially unsure about the online download thing because I was unsure about how to burn an ISO to a CD, but I was able to extract the ISO with WinRAR without a problem. I really ought to back up the file though...
Let's just say I'm not feeling any sense of loss for not having a physical box et al. And as an environmentalist that makes me happy. :^)