The difference in the Delux and Basic is the Delux has 32gb of memory, a charging station for the Wii U pad, Nintendo Land and 10% cash back on all digital purchases through sometime in 2015 I believe. If you are really going all digital that will be the way to go.
DL speeds for me have been good. I am getting Speeds close to what I get from Steam
As far as the HDD goes. I really do not see how people can insist its a bad thing. You really have to just blindly hate Nintendo for this. If you go the MS route you pay them for overpriced drives but you dont have any other choice. If you go with Sony part of the price of the HDD is added into the cost of the console and while you do get it at a discount, the price drops constantly and you either drop the price of the product or upgrade it. Nintendo lets you decide if, when and what size drive you want and the cost of the console is cheaper over all allowing them to put in a better CPU/Graphics card.







