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Number of Reviews: I have been using FS since version 1, when it had the crop duster, and have BOUGHT legitimate version of every single one since I remember. I do not take to MS bashing and I was really looking forward to FS9/2004. I first started FS9 with 1.8 MHz, 640Mb RAM MSI M/B and AGP 4X NVidia. FS9 kindly advised me that I would have to forget about hardware acceleration, and decided for me what display settings I could expect (which turned out to be the absolutely lowest possible configuration Very Very Low)and started crawling along at an average of 3.5 FPS. I had read the very good review (see below, "Good Sim, But Remember the "Sim" Part!") so I ordered the 256Mb 8X AGP NVidia he uses, and discovered that my mother board was 4X and therefore there was hardly any improvement with the 8X AGP(soared to 5 FPS :( ). So, what the hell, my 3 yrs old box was due for a renewal, and I got me a 3.0 MHz, 1 Gb of RAM together with the already purchased Video card. Net expense: Over $700 (in Nicaragua) thinking my patience and wallet would be soon rewarded -All that trying to hide from my wife and, in the process, having to reinstall twice XP, but what won't we do for our favorite Simulator!). Try again! FS still informed me that I had not enough memory, but did apply the software acceleration. Thanks FS9!, and upgraded me to Low configuration and I now hop along at... what do you think? 6.5 fpm. Shall I say I was somewhat unhappy? FS9 refuses to aknowledge the card in the Hardware Display Settings, and does not offer any screen resolution menu, as FS 2002 does, and does not let me go into the full screen mode. So it is VERY far from being happy with the present muscles and I have no idea how much more would make it more enthusiastic. It is not very communicative in this respect. Then I had the idea of reinstalling FS 2002. Well, with THAT much muscle, FS 2002 IS a beauty. To start with, you get MAXIMUM Display setting and performance, hardware acceleration enabled and you actually fly at 20 or more FPS. Go to LFLY (BRON, France) in January at, say, 16:00 local time in your Cessna, heading 120, then go up the snow covered valleys, now partly in the crisp winter mountain shadows of the sunset. You will find hundreds of lighted houses along the way, street lamps, etc. with still enough sunlight to see the sky and the reddish sunset light on top of the surrounding mountains. You can VFR around the light-dotted valleys of Oisans with a feeling of total reality and pure bliss. I did exactly the same with FS9 and got about 1 lighted house every 10 miles. Conclusion, if you decide to upgrade your machine for 2004, I suggest using it for 2002 which is superb, although you do loose quite a few improvement and save yourself the $25. Maybe the FS team will find a way to actually reach a reasonable setting and a 10 FPS in version 9.2- As for crashing to the desktop, downloading 9.1 helps a little, but not that much, particularly while you are around airports. Now, would not all that explain the $25 only MS charges for FS9? O maybe MS is using us to do a free world wide testing, to detect all the airports in the world that they have to upgrade to their new configuration (they have changed something in the airport properties which make FS crash to the desktop quite frequently). You decide. But I don't think it is quite fair not to be level with us. The warning SHOULD BE "Do not buy FS9 unless you have 5 GhZ turbocharged 64 bit machine, with 20 GB RAM and a 10Gb Video card". Yves Chaix