I got the Orange Box for Christmas as well. I had been anticipating Portal for some time, and whilst waiting for it to come out I bought the HL2 GotY Edition. At the time I had dial up. Little did I realize that this single fact effectively F#%$ED ME IN THE @$$!!!
After struggling to get the goddamned Steam system installed, I proceded to install HL2. After 45 mins of "Preparing to install..." (keep in mind my PC well exceeded minimum requirements) I finally began installing the program. About halfway through that (another 45 min.) I was greeted with a lovely little "C: Drive Full!" message. WELL I DIDN'T TELL YOU TO INSTALL IT THERE, NOW DID I?!?! I had to eventually reinstall the entire platform to the D: drive. That I could put up with; stupid me, installing to a nearly full drive. Oh well, now that that's finally done I can play in peace. To which, Steam said "Nope! to ensure that no one exploits our game delivery system, we need you to download and install a few patches!"
Shite.
At dialup speeds, I estimated total download and install time at oh, say, a week. Not exaggerating.
So I finally caved and literally hauled my entire system to a neighbor's house to borrow a cup of intertubes. After patching, I had to struggle for another half hour figuring out how to set up an offline mode.
From that point all was smooth sailing. I played HL2 and quite enjoyed it.
Despite that, I'm still considering returning the Orange Box out of principle.