I have to say, with the imminent release of FSX, I have been very reluctant to load up FS2004 one last time.  I've spent countless hours and money making that sim rock my socks off and now, I can't justify loading it up one last time.  I keep playing the updated FSX demo, since I got rid of the beta during a reformat, but I'm glad I did, for some odd reason.  I kind of like waiting for the release and not playing FS2004 for a couple weeks (since I haven't played since mid-september.)  It's also very good to know that most add-ons will be patched so all that money won't be lost with this new release and I can, somewhat, pick up where I left off.  Sure I've heard all the horror stories of autogen slowing even the best systems to a crawl and most people swearing off FSX already, but soon everyone will change over and deal with it.  The FS series has always pushed our computers to the brink and while Oblivion will run on today's high end computers, FSX is another story, hopefully until Vista and DX10 video cards are released.  Bottom line, sometimes I think MS knows that with a new FS release, new revenue will be generated because so many simmers upgrade and with the Vista and DX10 cards on the horizon, they will quickly be snatched up by simmers hoping it will solve the FSX low framerate issue.  Until then, I will get FSX next week and force myself to not look at the framerates and start with all my sliders to the minimum and increase them until I get satisfactory performance flying around in Chicago airspace.  Perhaps I'll post again once I smooth things out in FSX, until next time...