A few comments/questions:

1.  I find it interesting that gaming philosophy has changed a lot at SD.  Originally, gaming wasn't going to be ranked because of all the negative associations associated with ranked game play.  Now that's being incorporated.  I personally think this is for the best, as it gives the game makers the option of having rankings, whereas intentionally not making this will be limiting the options of using Impulse as a gaming platform.

2.  Will Impulse NOW run separately?  For example, could you run just that separate from Impulse?  It sounds mostly just like an RSS feeder than anything.  Or is there more than just info that it's used for?  I'm not clear on what "quickly and easily access Impulse features" means.

3.  There's a lot of cool possiblities being created here, but are any non-SD publisher games going to be able to use these new features?  Will SD have to be the publisher in order for a lot of these features to be utilized?

4.  What is the relationship between Stardock and Games for Windows Live?  I downloaded Microsoft's application and it looked like a modded version of Impulse, but without the game selection and harder to use.  And Windows Live integration was a planned feature?  So people that have Xbox accounts via Live can also use them for PC gaming?

It seems that regional pricing in Impulse isn't very easy to spot or understand. After all, you are adding items in USD in your cart. And when you are doing the check out, the price are local currency with only mention about exchange rate.

The euro pricing of SoaSE: Entrechement is not very obvious for example http://forums.impulsedriven.com/338701

One problem with Impulse is the lack of an estimated download time.  Given the size of games(say The Witcher), I would like to have an easy way to know how much longer a download is going to take so I can make plans around what time it will be finished.

An 'Estimate Download Time' button that checks your connection to Stardock before you download would also be nice.

One thing I miss from Stardock Central is being able to view and download demos on the games page.  It was easier than checking to see if a specific game had a demo.  I think a 'Demos' tab would be good for Impulse.

Well, personally, I think Impulse NOW should have an option to automatically download and/or install updates if that's what the user wants.

I don't know how much I'd use it personally, but I do have a much faster connection at work than at home (and this is a feature that people have been talking about on the boards for what seems like years), so I think Impulse Anywhere will be great.

I hope at phase 3 the "Games" button in the Community tab will be working. At the moment it just gives the message that I can't connect to the Reactor servers.

I would like to have an option to tell IMPULSE when to download something. In Australia we have capped plans. The one I am on allows me 12GB between 12pm and 12am (Sydney time where the ISP is based) and 54GB between midnight and midday. If I have a large download, I would love to be able to setup the download to start at a given time and stop downloading if it passes another time. So even if it is not finished, it would pick up again the next night during the off-peak window. Someone else posted about having a 2GB limit on their satellite each day. So similarly they would want to limit the amount IMPULSE downloads per day, thereby spanning the download over a number of days.

I guess it would work like this.

Pick the order you want downloads to occur in.

Tell Impulse to either a) download in one shot, download between a certain time and then wait for the next window or c) download X amount and wait for the next window

There would need to be a way to override the default option for each download on a case by case basis to. e.g. Schedule a 10GB download of X by time or download limit so it lasts over a week, but still tell Impulse to get the new Sins patch as soon as it can download it. (Note: This download would then come off the daily limit, so less of X is downloaded that day, keeping under the daily limit).

I hope that makes sense - I'm sure you get the idea. The implementation probably needs thinking about some more. I doubt I got it 100% right with a 5 minute post....

that is among the best news I've heard.   THAT is a game I don't have (somehow) but have wanted for a long time.  (it is always missing from the shelves or not on super-sale next to another title I want that is) so it becoming impulse will ensure that it becomes added to my RTS archive.

With the post above  this one:  I agree.   I don't have the time restrains, but sometimes I go to sleep without remembering to throttle up my downloads.   I don't want to have it up every time I idle because I have roommates that need to have minimum latency for their  gaming, but when its like 4am (or more like 6am since at 4 me might still be up) we don't, so I'd like to be able to turn on automatic downloads during times that I am not awake (but left the computer on for whatever)

one more option I'd like to see is the possibility to throttle the bandwidth which Impulse can use. I'd like to reserve some bandwidth for other programms while downloading via Impulse

Likewise have had trouble with downloads.  I'm very very glad to hear I can make them portable.  My internet connection goes through Cisco's Clean Access agent and can sometimes be interrupted to re-authenticate.  I download in little fearful bits of time and hope to high heaven that I don't lose my connection lest Impulse choke and I have to start all over again.  I've gotten one full download that somehow corrupted and wouldn't install to Vista (even though I followed instructions to make it a "OS-independent" archive).

A hell yes on both the throttle control and scheduling suggestions.  I have to stay up all bleeding night to get anything large off Impulse.

I'm practically nocturnal in an attempt to take advantage of the free period Hughesnet has overnight, Hulu in particular has destroyed my sleep schedule.

Good one - I missed that one. Makes sense - P2P programs like emule has it. It means that other people can still surf the web without it being a crawl.... (i.e. they feel like they are on an unused 256 ADSL link )

Here's one that is getting REALLY fancy. The ability to detect that I am playing Sins and need a good ping time and therefore automatically suspends/throttles back so my gaming is not impacted... Of course this won't/can't work if there are multiple PCs sharing the bandwidth as it won't know about the other computer's activities....

Will Impulse be getting PDF manuals for supported games?  Steam has this feature and its handy for passing time while the game you just purchased is downloading.

For instance I have Company of Heroes on Steam. If I want to look at the manual for the game I right click, then select view player manual. Afer that It sends me to a webpage with a PDF of the manual.

I think Impulse could benefit from a similar feature.

We've had manuals available with the games since the SDC days (usually in PDF format). For third party titles it just depends on the publisher to provide them. Granted, they're a part of the game install rather than a freely-available download, but they are there.

My suggestion for the UI is to stop forcing black text on white backgrounds and instead RESPECT the user's colour scheme. It makes your applications impossible to use if you have problems with high contrast. It's the same with Skinstudio, which makes me really wish I had my money back. Is that specific enough for you? Why does a customization company hard-code their UIs to be inalterable? It's ridiculous.

I don't have so much to suggest really... Well, I do, but it's things that are more complex than just impulse, I just think outside the box, sometimes even leaving the planet. I'm not very comfortable tossing out my most revolutionary ideas to just anyone though.

There is one minor thing that annoys me about impulse though. It's the inability to open the orb while logging in... I don't see why the preferences window and restore archive feature need to be disabled while connecting, it's hugely annoying.

Use a router with QoS, no need for messing about with the network on the local computer.

Feedback:

Not quite "Phase 3" specific, but I've been wanting to see two dates tracked in Impulse for products:

1) Date available through Impulse (which we have)

2) Date game/app was originally released (which we don't).

Steam tracks the original release date.  It's useful information for me as I browse because at a glance I can gauge what kind of tech to expect, e.g., determine the relative quality of graphics.  Screenshots don't always provide an accurate portrayal of in-game graphics quality (not because they're doctored, but because they're a still shot vs motion - and often the stills look better than what you experience in actual game play. It's a matter of human perception).

I would be satisified with this additional date tracked for games/apps going forward, and perhaps over time, back-fill the data on existing offerings.

Augh!!  Doggone it Brad, I was about 30% done downloading Supreme Commander (a 3 day process so far) and made the terrific mistake of leaving my computer to take care of errands.  Cisco Clean Access reset my internet connection and I lost the entire download.  This is the seventh time I've tried to download the doggone game and I'm getting really REALLY tired of it.  While I like the idea of Impulse, I've wasted my money in this case.  And while I like the improvements you've listed there are two under-the-hood improvements that need to be made before I can successfully use large programs:

1) Impulse needs to recognize an interrupted connection, stop downloading, and save progress automatically.

2) Archiving needs a lot of improvement. 

I've already communicated with support, but they're confused about my problem.  If I install a program and then archive it, that program is limited to the OS on the installed computer.  However, a program archived first and THEN installed should be OS independent because the download should include all the necessary files for supported OSs.  a) This didn't work when I tried it and After successfully archiving a program on Vista and attempting to restore the archive on Vista (yes, the same exact operating system), Impulse STILL complained about not having the right OS files.  Something's broken here and needs to be fixed.

That's 4 failed downloads, 2 failed installations due to OS problems, 1 successful installation before formatting a hard disk for other reasons, and 1 unhappy customer.

Looks good.

I'm really looking forward to the Impulse Anywhere part. I've often complained about wanting this sort of thing before.

Thanks.

April 7th isn't too far away for Phase 3.  I hope things are going well for this to rollout then.

Edit: turns out that's supposedly only a week before Demigod is released.  Makes sense.