I've been wanting to upgrade to a better computer, but, alas, with the economy, I may have to wait awhile. I'm sure no one else is experiencing such a cutback in life... :)Anyway, I currently have a laptop and would like to see if anyone has any suggestions to "help" it to be "optimized" to run FS9, as far as it can go. It does a decent job, but, I'm sure I must not know what I'm missing! I don't look at framerates, just how well the sim is looking and flying. It has locked up with the Bell heli in the air before. I use ENDITALL each time before I opem FS, and that certainly seems to help.Anyway, here's the ACER Aspire 2012 laptop specs, as best as I can find them:Intel Pentium M (1500MHz) 1.5GHzChipset: Intel 855GMEProcessor: X-86 family 6 Model 9 Stepping 5 GenuineIntel ~1498512 MB DDR333 SDRAM (256MB X 2)ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64MB DDR)XP Pro 2002 SP3SMBIOS Version 2.3Bios/Update = Acer V1.3/4-27-2004As running right now (after using ENDITALL) memory reads as follows:Physical Memory: 512MBAvailable Memory: 194.48Total Virtual Memory: 2GBAvailable Virtual memory: 1.96GBPage File Space: 1.22GBNow, do you see anything I can do? Can I update Bios (not sure I know how, but will figure it out if it helps)?Update drivers for ATI vid card (I guess it's got a Radeon 9700 with 64mb)?From what I can read, it appears that I can upgrade to a max of 2GB (from the current 512MB). Would this make a great improvement?Can I OC this thing....or, if I could, is that unwise on a laptop with very little cooling?If there's anything you think I might do to enhance FS with this machine, I would greatly appreciate the advice.Also, I have a Fanthom Drives External HD hooked up to the laptop thru a 2.0 USB port. Would it be permissable to run FS9 installed on this drive rather than my root drive in the laptop....or would this "kill" FS9? I'm guessing that it would be a lot worse, but just want to make sure. The HD on the laptop is only 60GB and pretty full right now. That's why I'm asking.Thanks ahead for any help or advice!!Lobo :)

Well...64mb of video ram could be the main drawback. However, you might download a free utility called PCI Latency tool 2.0. Set everything you can to "32". It helped my laptop a little. More ram is always a good thing, though no sure fire cure. Leave the sim on the internal HD (it should be faster), and put whatever you can on the external drive. You need overhead (free space) on the internal HD. Even if you could OC, as you say, not a good idea on a laptop.Good luck. Have fun anyway.Bob

Thanks Bob!Any other suggestions out there....please??Lobo :)

You may not have shopped lately, but it's really not that expensive these days. This is essentially my rig. It runs the PMDG stuff just fine. http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWi...tNumber=7159746