Although much has happened in hardware evolution since the launch of FSX, the biggest single disappointment for many was Vista.  Many felt that 12 months or more of hardware performance gains were absorbed by a very demanding Vista operating system and thus large sections of business as well as many games users etc have stuck firmly with XP.  For the serious computing enthusiast however, XP x64 offered better performance, more RAM and although a little short on drivers in some areas, rock solid stability.  Whilst CPU's have gained more cores in the last 18 months, they haven't generally gained in clock speeds nor raw performance - unless of course you are able to afford the high-end Core i7 offerings...

For those of us looking for an upgrade without a remortgage however, our savior could be just around the corner - and from an unlikely direction... Windows 7 is due for release in October.  "Oh no!" I hear you cry - not another Vista.  Well, I have to say having run the Beta of the 64 bit Windows 7 almost exclusively since the beginning of the year and now the Release Candidate, I have been pleasantly surprised.

Windows 7 might look and feel much like Vista, but there the comparison ends.  It's more reliable, massively quicker and overall more like Vista should have been.  I'm not running a high spec PC by today's standards for my main office PC - Dual core Athlon 4600x2 (skt939), 2GB 533MHz RAM, on-board 6100 graphics & Dual-Head 6600GT (Running 3 screens) - but I rarely see any delay. At any one time I have at least 8 applications open plus anti-virus and often as many as 30 documents of various types and yet response is always instant.  This is a significant improvement on XP and XP x64.  Vista was abandoned on this machine after less than a week so this should give an idea of the improvements!  It isn't just a one off either as I'm also running the 32bit version of Windows 7 on an Acer Netbook with Atom 1.6GHz CPU & 1.5GB RAM with equally impressive results.  Windows 7 is clearly more than a re-branded Vista.  I have found the general 'usability' to be much improved and generally speaking if it runs on Vista it runs better on Windows 7.  Areas like display and network configuration are more innovative and more user friendly and more drivers support than ever is already embedded.  Installation is quicker and altogether more trouble-free than Vista too.

For those looking to upgrade, our current advice is to await the launch of Windows 7 in October.  We will be preparing a range of new PC's to suit all budgets based on Windows 7 in late September and we hope to have an online 'configure & buy' section added to the website for the launch of Windows 7.

For those wanting to try Flight Sim on Windows 7 themselves, our Demo PC will be at the September club meeting at Ipplepen on Sunday the 20th September 2009.  Please visit South West Flight Simulator Group (www.swfsg.co.uk) for more details and directions.