Need advice for purchasing FM12

I've mulling around whether to purchase FM12 or not. First of all, I decided to stick with FM10 and not purchase FM11 as I was disappointed with the demo for it. FM11 had some new features that in my opinion had a negative impact on my personal enjoyment of the game. Features like dealing with players' agents, for example. Anyway, I've been reading many threads about FM12 and it seems like SI have done a good job in fine-tuning those new features, and I'm also getting a bit tired of FM10 to be honest. I'm seriously thinking of buying FM12 but want to know if buying it through Steam is a good idea? I usually like to have an actual disk, but at the same time I would prefer not to wait for 2 weeks to receive a copy of the game. I guess I'm looking for some reviews from players that have used Steam to purchase the game and how were your experiences using it? Is it possible to play it in offline mode if you purchase through Steam?

It's possible to play in offline, but Steam still has to be running.

You can't play the game without Steam, even if bought on disk.

Buy whichever is cheaper (though don't buy second hand as it wont work).

That's fine if it has to be running, just as long as I can be offline while playing is what matters.

I think I will go through steam, it seems to be just as cheap as any other place but I can have the game much faster.

Steam can be a bit difficult to go full-offline mode but there are FAQ's and guides and.. things to tell you how to make it work. I don't know where!.

You mean aside from the actual "Offline Mode" that Steam has?

Basically just make sure you set it "offline" whilst you still have got a connection, so that you can then play without one.