Yes, definitely use a download manager (that compares checksums or similar), so that you don't spend hours just to get a corrupt download.
As far as X1 vs X2, you will hear different stories on that. My own experience is that X1 constantly froze on my system, while X2 runs just fine (same system). In addition to the bells and whistles, there were some fixes and tweaks done "under the hood", so I would expect X2 to run better.
That said, I know some users have had the opposite experience, so if you haven't tried X2 yet , best to download the demo first and give it a test-run.