My current OS is XP Home (on a E8500 and GTX650Ti) and I pretty much stay with the FS9 world.  I am still on the fence on going to Win7 as my home PC is primarily for flight sim only.

 

I can use my work PC (OS Win7) for any web surfing, like now, if necessary.

 

Outside of the security issues with web surfing with XP, are there any real benefits (like increase performance) by moving over to the Win7 OS for flight sim?

The updates you get on a live OS are not only related to internet security.

 

So apart from still having support, which is a good enough reason for me to change onto Win7, think that most software developers are using Windows 7 now (better said, Win7 is the OS they have in mind while programming), and Windows 7 is the OS they recommend. Whether you're better performance wise, I honestly don't know. But I do know that the first thing they ask you when you approach the support of any FS product is "What OS are using?"

 

As of today, Windows 7 64bit is *the* OS to use for flight simulation.