How many MB of data does my bitcoin client have to download to be fully sync'd? Best guess/calculation?

I transferred some bitcoins to my new wallet after generating an address. This was this morning, and have had my bitcoin wallet syncing all afternoon (5 hours), so far it has downloaded 1.5GB of data and maxed out my 3G broadband quota for the month :-(

It is also really slow towards the end, sitting at 80% now and ticking over verrrry slow. Is this because the latest blocks contain more transactions (as doesn't every block contain history of all transactions before it?).

Will that mean future new bitcoin users are going to have to deal with a huge download size/ sync quota?
My current Bitcoin folder, May 28th 2012, is 2.16 GB. Of which maybe 60MB is data personally to me like my wallet, addresses, logs and transaction history.
So basicly you will have to download a little over 2 GB for being in sync with the network.

To answer your second question: I think yes. Bitcoin exists out of a long chain with blocks containing all the transactions that were ever made. So the longer Bitcoin lives and the more it is used, the bigger this block chain will grow and the more data every user will have to download before they can use the Bitcoin client safely.

EDIT: blockchain.info charts the pure blockchain size here: https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

If this growth rate stays the same, bitcoin can get in trouble...