Got in too not surprisingly. I get into Battlefield shit easily. Late to the party as I signed up for the newsletter at the last minute but I'm in!
If you can run Bad Company 2 well, you won't have a problem with BF3. I rate the alpha's requirements just slightly higher than BC2s. I may be wrong and the full version needs a super computer, especially if you max it out (currently no visual setting that makes it look as amazing as the videos).
You can buy drm free games / music / ebooks, and if you keep backups of your data (like documents and family photos etc), then you shouldn't lose the game. but with a disk, your toddler could put it in the toaster and there goes your $60