I'm still buying the majority of my games in retail boxes.  I like having the CD or DVD available when the download part goes awry.  A good example would be the problems with SDC and installing Galciv2.  I and many others like me have to install the game from the CDs and only then will SDC work to update them.  I don't know why that is.  I've tried it on 3 different computers (One with W2K and two with XP Pro).  Luckily, the CDs work to start things off.  I own 5 original copies of GalCiv2 in the box, 3 of which are installed.

I'm also the primary computer/software specifier for the company I work for and our software is almost exclusively boxed.  Even our computers (all Dells unless I build them myself) come with CD copies of the installed software.  I must admit that a lot of those CDs wind up in the trash and I do a lot of initial uninstalling when I get the computers in.

That being said, I've also bought online and downloaded recent software such as the GalCiv2 expansions and non-game software like anti-virus.

I particularly like the try before you buy option with most packages.  I've chosen my multimedia packages that way.

One pretty much needs to download to have modern software and updates.  Still, having that physical copy is reassuring.

i prefer going and buying the games in retail.  when you download them, it's not fun because all you do i press a button when if you go shopping for the game you not only see the game you want but also many diffrent games that have similar themes creating a larger library of games than just the games from the one download site (usually only one company)

i personaly prefer retail for two reasons. Reason 1: normaly i dont have a particular game in mind when i go to the store, i just look around at the boxes and read the discriptions and find cool games that way

plus its alot safer to have a hard copy. sometimes downloads dont work or you lost internet half way through, and dont get what you want but still get charged (i admit this doesnt happen often). But recently my computer got a blue screen of death and i had to send it back to HP to fix it with the realazation that all my files might be lost for good - but since i have a hard copy of most of my games i dont need to worry about losing them.

if the price is usualy under 20$, ill download it, and i will still download most things anyway, butand i will often pay a little extra to have a hard copy sent to me just in case.

I actually do both. Buying games digitally is sometimes simply cheaper for me because of the currency exchange rate between Euro and $. Also the the game boxes are often not worth getting as game s often come in a simple DVD box + 20 page manual. But buying retail games contrary makes it easier to resell them after playthrough and this is huge plus for me on consoles as the whole preowned market is there better than on the PC  

I love the download.  I just back the install up to disk and I don't have a box, advertisements, manuals I never read because I have gamefaqs.com at my disposal, and other sundries filling up my garbage can.