Personally I would rather stick to steam. As much as origin is probably fine, I would rather not end up having multiple services like that running on my computer. I mean, I already have steam, I already like steam, why would I want to run something different that is going to be more of the same? Not to mention according to the user agreement on origin, I believe that they are not obligated to keep the download available to you for more than a year, as opposed to steam, I can redownload it whenever I want.
I might opt for the physical copy in this case, and as kerak said, if theres a possibility that I wont have to have the disc in the drive to run the game, then I am completely fine with that. Anyone here have a physical copy of BC2? Do you have to have the disc in to play?