Google Analytics and tracking unique downloads

Question

I have a resource page with .pdfs and .ppts
What do I need to do to track if a user clicks on these links?
Is there also an extra step I need to take to track if they successfully downloaded the target completely?
I heard one solution is to make a single sub-web page for each download item and stick an analytics snippet in to the page as one way to track, but this sounds tedious and not very efficient. Is there something that can track this on the fly?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Here's a solution that may work. Just tried it today. May see results tomorrow.
Get the Google analytics code.
Open TextEdit and set it to plaintext.
Paste the code WITHOUT these opening and closing tags :
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
// -->
</script>
Save the file as analytics.js
Put the file on the server and determine the URL to it.
Create a blank page (for testing) and paste this code in a HTML Snippet.
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
var headID = parent.document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
var newScript = parent.document.createElement('script');
newScript.type = 'text/javascript';
newScript.src = '../js/analytics.js';
headID.appendChild(newScript);
// -->
</script>
Where it says *newScript.src = '../js/analytics.js';* use your own URL.
Publish the page.
Visit your page and open the Activity window in Safari (Comand-Option-A)
Note the 2 URLs to Google. They look the same as with code that is pasted in a page.
Tomorrow check with Google to see if your page appears in the stats.
Call your friends and family and tell them to visit the page. More visitors may show more results.
If it works, fine.
If not, then I'm mistaken and will sob in a corner.