It kind of has to be a laptop. My wife and I live in a condo and we just don’t have the space for me to setup a desktop without ruining the décor (and my wife would never allow it). I believe the i7 processor my laptop will have is a Sandy Bridge..That should help..right?

Jep, it´s Sandy Bridge but as the others siad, even it´s SB, on only 2 GHz it won´t give you the results that you want. It might be quite good if you wan´t to fly with little GA planes in rural areas but if you wanna fly with an 747 into Boston or any other big airport you will be dissatisfied. I tell you from my experinece.

Hi,You might be better off with FS9. Plenty of add-ons to make it look great!

That´s a really good idea, Jim. With some scenery addons like REX and good planes it´ll be ways better than FSX with an laptop.

It kind of has to be a laptop. My wife and I live in a condo and we just don’t have the space for me to setup a desktop without ruining the décor (and my wife would never allow it). I believe the i7 processor my laptop will have is a Sandy Bridge..That should help..right?

I'm no computer wiz either, although I do build my own for FSX use. AFAIK, a laptop is not big enough to provide the level of cooling you are going to need for a CPU (most likely over-clocked) that will service FSX. At some point the silicon technology will catch up, but by then FSX will no longer be the latest and greatest.I haven't really been following the evolution of Flight!, the successor to FSX that is in design at the moment (not much is known about it's ability to actually "succeed" FSX yet, it may be a totally different type of platform). However, one of it's big attributes is that it won't require as many CPU cycles to run it, so there may be good news for you coming.Finally, I too live in a small down-town (Boulder) condo. I know that things can get cramped in a 1,300 square foot residence, however my wife and I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops between us (mostly Apple machines). But I recognize the need to consider space!Good luck, and welcome to this addiction of flight simulation! Bruce.

Hi,You might be better off with FS9. Plenty of add-ons to make it look great!

Can FS9 take advantage of multi core processors? If not I don't know how well it will run on just 25% of the processor's computing power.

It depends what your expectations are. Laptops are not ideal platforms for FSX, if like the rest of us, you expect amazing performance and brilliant graphics all the time. Most power-towers don't even achieve this all the time. If you are purchasing your laptop specifically to run FSX, you should reconsider. But if you are just happy to tear about the sky for fun, then the laptop should meet your needs.Eric

Mine works pretty good and I run FSX with all addons below--

Can FS9 take advantage of multi core processors? If not I don't know how well it will run on just 25% of the processor's computing power.

Not across cores but it will run 100% on core 1 and it runs super on both my multi-core desktop and laptop.