I've actually got a few questions on hand about this, and they mainly center around Steam games.

I want to buy a game package from Valve, but don't know which to choose. I at least want Half-Life 2 to be included (for obvious reasons), but am uncertain about the others. I'm mainly stuck between either buying the Holiday package (HL2, CSS, HL2E1, original HL) and the upcoming Orange Box (HL2, HL2E1, HL2E2, Portals, TF2).

I enjoy playing CSS some, and I'm already familiar with the basics, but have never played a Team Fortress game. Based on experience with the previous TF, do you think it will be more worth it to have TF2 or CSS? Hell, I don't even know what the Episode 1 and Episode 2 things are (are they TV shows?) so I'm not really concerned about them...

On a side-note, I just wanted to verify my new system specs to see if I'll be able to run the above-mentioned games (in both packages) on at least Medium graphical settings (no lag):

Intel Pentium D 2.8GHZ dual-core
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256mb video card (DDR2)
2GB of 667MHZ RAM

Finally, and this is probably my biggest concern of all: Will I be able to actually play online (and I mean without lagging myself to tears) in CSS and TF2 with this internet connection?

927kbps down
332kbps up
Latency = 134 ms

I obtained these results from Speedtest.net and I am absolutely certain I picked the right server. Is this information to be trusted...and if it is, can I play online decently?

Thanks for your time and patience...you need all you can to put up with Steam.

Episodes 1 and 2 are "standalone" expansions to hl2. and you should be able to play HL2 on your computer since mine played it with only minor slowdown sometimes (specs: AMD Sempron 2800+, 512mb of ram and a Nvidia GF FX5200). i can't answer the other questions since i don't have steam installed (Piece of sh**) and before you ask, i used a no-steam crack for hl2.

I'd just rather get my Half-Life 2 legally...

Okay. Here we go. ORANGE BOX!!!11!!!! FTW!!!!!!!11!!!
Sorry. Id go with the orange box, portals looks like it could be pretty good, and TF2 should be awesome (if its as good as tf1). HalfLife Episodes is just a Halflife standalone chopped up into 3 pieces. If you really want HL1 and expansions, which aged fairly well, im sure you can get those super cheap off amazon or some-such.

As far as your rig goes you should have no problem playing the games. This goes for online play as well, to get a feel for your online speeds I have no idea what to use to gauge them so I ran a speedtest off the same site to compare. I scored;

1088 download
617 upload
and a delicious (not really) ping of 88

I ran the test a few times to check for variances and my dl and ul rates were usually within 50 kbs and my ping within 10 or so.

I have no problem running CSS with my above connection, but yours is a little higher so you might experience servers with horrible lag, and some with hardy any. But this can go for many people. Well thats my 2cents. GL.

I'd suggest whatever package comes with Day of Defeat Source, you'll want Half-Life 2, and a multiplayer component, and quite honestly, Counter-Strike Source is pathetic.

I dunno...I think I might just bite the bullet and buy the cheaper Source Multiplayer Pack. Even though I'd like to have Half-Life 2 along for the party, I'm more set on wanting to play DoD: Source and CSS; and that package seems to be the one that I want.

I'm really apprehensive about downloading those games from Steam though...do I need to worry about packets getting dropped and me getting stuck with a "Hi, we're Steam and we've found another non-existent error, you're now screwed out of your thirty dollars"? Because I'd really hate it if that happened...