Ableton Forum

I'm looking to purchase the Suite upgrade from Lite but cannot decide on the boxed or the download.
I've read the comparisons and am aware with download I wouldn't receive EIC2 or Session Drums but what is confusing me is the difference in size required on hard drive between the two. Is EIC and Session Drums that big of files to require that much more hard drive space?

The installation size of the boxed version of Ableton Suite 8 is 48 GB. The downloadable version requires 4.6 GB of hard drive space.

That's an awful big difference.

EIC is something like 15 GB; session drums is even larger (>20 GB for sure, don't remember exact size).
That's mostly the difference; both are effectively large sample libraries, which couldn't easily be downloaded
(i guess; both of those are 'uncompressed'; compressed, EIC fits on a DVD, and session drums on 2 DVDs).