There was a lot of hysterics in relation to the EADM. A lot of people saw this, and immediately thought: "Oh no! Spyware! Big Brother! The evil corporation of EA is monitoring my activity! Invasion of privacy!" and countless other things.
All of which are fertilizer. Nothing more than silly paranoia.
Origin, and the EADM before it, does nothing other than make your EA gaming experience easier. In fact, my Origin is never actually on unless I turn it on myself, so it eats up exactly 0% of my resources. And there are quite literally plenty of benefits without a single drawback. Manual patching is a complete pain in the neck, so there is no way anyone is going to convince me that they're doing it for any other reason than appeasing their overactive paranoid instincts.
I have a relatively fast internet connection (I pay for extra bandwidth), so it takes me about 2 hours to download an expansion pack and about 2 minutes to download a stuff pack. But, if you want the benefits of a digital install without the time investment, there's an easy work around for this:
I use my discs to install all the expansions (I download the stuff packs digitally, because it's faster than installing from a disc), but I digitally install the last expansion or stuff pack. This means I'll spend just a wee bit over 2 hours downloading at the most (I'll typically do it overnight, while I sleep), and I can leave my discs in their packages in my desk drawer while I'm playing. This is the reason that I will continue to buy hard copies of these games.
I'm not entirely sure that the Sims 2 is digital yet, or if it will ever be. Storing things electronically does cost money, so I doubt there would be a lot of profit in digitizing legacy software. However, I have never looked...so for all I know it could be available.
