It is NOT normal for impulse. I have 28 games on it (long time customer) and quite a few software items, and none of those, as far as I can remember, have this problem. With Steam, I am not sure, because it updates in background, so I do not know, and honestly it is irrelevant.

The reason it takes a while is because it analyzes what you need to download in order to minimize the download size. This selective method certainly takes longer than a pure patch that applies everything as needed, but it has the advantage of speeding up download times and reduce bandwidth costs.

I get a long ass wait on "Calculating Download Size" and its really annoying .

spider solitaire? whats that?   can I play/

Well Impulse itself takes about 4 minutes to open in the first place on my computer, then probably another 6 or 7 minutes to update Elemental.... I end up skipping the updates because i don't want to wait around, i want to play!

I go make a cup of joe, when I come back......it's ready to go...............What's wrong with that?