For example, my d/l speed at home is crappy and I can d/l at another location very quickly.

How do I d/l from there and then just put on my portable drive and install at home?

I'm not especially familiar with Steam, but I believe you can authorize your Steam account on another computer, then download the software on it. At that point, I think you can copy the game files from wherever Steam puts them onto your portable drive and copy them to a similar location on the other computer. As long as both computers are running Steam with your authorized account, I think you're okay.

Just make sure that you have the account information for internet access at the other location..

so, that means if i use ubuntu on my laptop, i cannot d/l the windows version for my desktop :(
There's no iso-ish file to d/l?

unless you can run it via Wine, then I'm afraid you can't get it.

if you manage to run Steam, then you can:

1) log in with your account

2) download the game you want using Steam

3) back up the game files using Steam (there's an option that says exactly that "Backup game files") and copy to your PC

4) run steam, choose Backup & Restore Games from the menu and then follow the steps.

You can back up the game files, which puts them on a storage device, you can then restore them on your home PC.

I don't know about copy and pasting the files straight from the Steamapps folder on one computer to the next. You can, however, log into Steam on a different computer, download your game and then run the backup utility which will make a back up folder for the game that you can store on a hard drive or DVD.

Even if you use the backup utility to backup and restore the game, Steam will still have to check it over and install any updates. However, at least you don't have to download all XX amount of gigs the game is on top of that.

/thread

i'll try wine next time.