I agree with the others, you will probably get many different answers on this, but here is my personal opponion:

If you want a good workstation distro with some nice configuration tools, go with the newer Mandrake builds.

If you want to avoid downloading as much as possible, get SuSE (It's 7 CD's or 1 DVD now). There is usually only one or two things I download after installing SuSE, since so much is in it. Financially SuSE is not doing really well, but they have grabbed enough interest that companies like IBM will not let them fall.

But since everyones opponions are different, I also recommend trying out as many as possible. I used my broadband connection a few years back to just download the FTP install disks, then let it run to install so many different distros. It also gave me a nice insight into each one, and finally I settled with SuSE. (Mainly because of Yast at that early stage was much better then where the other distros were for configuration).