Just sharing a few thoughts about Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (which came installed with my new Sony Vaio laptop) and primarily FS9, which is my preferred simming medium.

First impressions: I like W7. I'd stayed with XP Pro in desktop and previous laptop, avoiding Vista like the plague. This time though, there was no option but to go W7, and I was in truth a little concerned about how it would work with FS9, having read a few unencouraging posts around the forums. I needn't have worried: turning off User Account Control and installing FS9 outside the Program Files x86 folder (into a folder called 'My Apps' in which I run all my old XP-and-before software) has resulted in an easy-as-pie installation. The importation of all my addon files and folders from my old HP laptop installation barely took an hour, and now FS9 runs maxed out on everything with the FPS indicator hardly shifting from my defined setting of 25fps under any kind of scenery load. The Vaio's Radeon card, i5-430 processor and 4gb RAM also help here.

There is one casualty though: the venerable old free FSNavigator v3 that I was running (previously with FS8 as well as FS9 on previous computers) finally threw its hands up at W7, and dropped the frame rate to 7 or 8 whenever I activated it. Not a big issue: I've used the NAV-Info gauge available here as part of the fual panel upgrade for the Probst 727 panel in the downloads section, and that serves almost as well.

FSX? Well, the Vaio/W7-64 runs FSX+Acceleration in high to max settings at FPS of between 15 and 20, which is perfectly acceptable, especially as I only use it occasionally for testing purposes. There was a little work to do before getting FSX to run under W7 though: W7 ships with DX11, and I had to replace its DX9 kernel with a download of the original DX9.0c to get FSX+Acceleration to run. Makes absolutely no difference to the machine however.

Finally, there does seem to be one area where FS9 scores over its newer rival. Firing up FSX causes W7 (which runs advanced Aero display settings in Home Premium) to reduce the graphics settings to W7 Basic temporarily before it fires FSX up, and then returns to Aero after the program quits. Oddly, FS9 does not seem to have to do this.

So there you are: nothing apparently to worry about with FS9 or FSX with W7 (32 or 64 bit) as long as you set it up correctly prior to installation.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Thanks microlite.  I'm heading that way soon.

best,

...............john

I sort of can't believe that the author of FSNavigator did not release the program into the public domain when he/she stopped selling and supporting it.  Not that it would solve the "time marches on" aspect of not running under Win 7....... but there are a lot of people that would like to have that program...and would have BOUGHT it if it was still for sale.

Oh well.

best,

.................john