I have recently bought a top shelf notebook in Singapore and so my desktop is now pretty much redundant. I don't play games any more apart from FS and all the program files and apps and stuff I will now do on the notebook.So I have just reinstalled XP Home, stripped it down, BlackVipered it etc and partitioned up with HDD 1 (60Gb)C: OS D: PagefileE: "FS" Program Files (ASV, FEX etc)HDD 2 (200Gb)F: FS9(G: FSX maybe later)I want to eventually add 3 24" WS monitors and get TripleHead2Go.I reckon I can rejuvenate this oldish spec to perform great again and not strangle it with useless Apps and junk.Has anyone else gone and done a "FS Only Rig" ?Happy Vanentine's Day.

Hi Max,Yeah, sort of. I've built a new PC that has an XP partition for everyday stuff, then a (very) stripped down version of XP, which I've removed as much unneeded stuff as possible - services, default XP apps, all that, so I get the best of both worlds that way. The old (redundant machine) runs RC4, AS6, FS Commander and FS build via Widefs. I've also configured the whole thing so I can surf on the second machine whilst the first sits off t'interweb, but maintains network connectivity - thus bypassing the need for AV etc - since I am careful about what websites I go to and emails I open, see no need for this anyway.Leo Godalming UKhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpgMSI P6N PlatinumXFX GeForce 512MB 8800 GTSQuad Core E6600 @2.4GHz3GB Corsair PC2-6400WD 250GB for Flight SimHitachi Deskstar 500GB - Dedicated FSXP, Regular XP and Vista

Yes, I bought a mid range Dell desktop last year and it's exclusively FS9 and FSX (which still doesn't run any where near as well, even on the new machine). See my specs below - I run 3 17 inch flat panels and saved some money by buying a Dual Head To Go -- I returned the 3HTGO I bought because there was no practical advantage to it with a 2 head video card, and it actually doesn't offer high resolutions with many ATI cards. (I've been through 3 mid range video cards in the past year, both nVidia and ATI cards and have found far less tweaking necessary with ATI on multi-screen setups, so that's where I've settled.) I'm hesitant to go any larger than 17 inch because I'm concerned that that would slow it down. I put my wife's 20 inch widescreen on and hated it -- and I was in no mood to spend more time tweaking the panel.cfg to get the 2d panel so that it wasn't stretched out, either.Like Leo, I also run Radar Contact and Active Sky via WideFS on an older Dell, and surf/work on it while cruising. However I just bought this, to see if it was better than the freeware ones I've been using. << http://www.gapalp.com/ >>It's ok but really needs a "browse to file" button so that I can get to my PDF checklists easier.

Hmm maybe 3 x 24" is a bit keen... :-)Yes WideFS does interest me the more I think about this. Having all your "FS apps" running on a networked laptop must give some CPU cycles back. Might look into that. About time I tried it out.