Randy -- and others,If anyone took offense at my post, I am sorry. It was meant rather tongue in cheek, as I was hoping my closing comment -- having hit your head one time too many on the overhead panel -- clearly implied.I AM NOT knocking File Planet or Microsoft in any way!And I AM NOT knocking anyone whose desire is to really make a contribution by beta testing this product. Indeed, all FSX owners will be truly indebted to the beta testors for their efforts to make the program as robust as possible.I was simply communicating my sense that many of the people standing in line to get this beta have no more interest in beta testing than my 80 year old grandmother does -- they just want to get their hands on FSX, the sooner the better.We will ALL have FSX before long! Don't worry, be happy.-Rick

I would certainly hope that there's room for people to fit into both categories.I've wanted to be a part of the game development industry for a long time, but, no offense to the ACES team intended, I'm just not crazy enough to do it.So this is my small little way of contributing to an old dream by helping with one part of the process, and I take it very seriously. Of course, at the same time, I really do want it now, and would do quite a bit to get my hands on it early.

Well I'm here waiting for an acceptance letter, the waiting is the hardest part.(-:

Achieved download speed is dependent on a lot of factors, but our own beta testers routinely download the FSX beta from our servers so it's far from impossible.

Well said.

Well knowing everything that's been done in our community around the release, they'll send that beta and release the demo at the same time... HAHAHA :(

If it's supposed to be available in a few days I wonder if anybody will hear they've been accepted by Monday.

I really hope so I'm anxious to hear a response. Even if I was not accepted I think it would be nice if they notified me instead of just letting me sit there confused as to why I hadn't received an acceptance letter yet.

Looks like fileplanet is just a ripoff. Why don't they just provide a torrent. Several Linux distros and also X-Plane can be downloaded using Bittorrent. It is not necessarily faster but at least you don't have to pay for it.Alex

>Well said.Thanks. Does that mean I get the beta now?

I sure hope you're right.

>Achieved download speed is dependent on a lot of factors, but>our own beta testers routinely download the FSX beta from our>servers so it's far from impossible.I have no doubt that your own Microsoft servers can do it fine. They probably have a whopping high download speed and a download manager that checks for errors as it sends and resends data when necesary.The issue is can Fileplanets server download 12Gig in a reasonable time frame and error free? If they make a special effort maybe they can but I wasn't encouraged by my experiences with downloading a 1.6 Gig file from them the other day. In the distant past I have downloaded from fileplanet at 200K (about 5 times the speed I got the oher day) so it probably can be done if fileplanet make a special effort to ensure that their server capcity meets the demand. I hope the FS team tests fileplanets competance at doing this and get on fileplanet's back if they aren't. I suspect its probably down to an issue of how many people are sharing the same file server. My problem downloading the other day may have been the sheer number of paid subscribers downloading at the same time and swamping the server.Of course with all my worrying here I may not be chosen for the beta anyway, ha, ha. At lesat if only a limited number of peole are chosen for the beta the server capacity may not be swamped and we (or those who get chosen for the beta) may get a reasonable download speed after all).

Yeah it is a ripoff when you pay to join up to get faster download speeds and then find that your download speed goes down to lower than when you weren't a subscriber. Yeah bit torrent would probably be a lot less error prone as well.Normally I actually download from Ausgamers here in Australia and I usually get download speeds from them of 300K, its completely free too; though they don't have all demos and are only available if you have an Australian IP (of course they won't get the fsx beta either).

>It's an aggregator business model and has to do with our>ability to scale (or not, depending on your POV) our internal>program. Ahhh the old aggregator business model, I see, well that explains it then.

It could be a location based thing.I'm on the east coast of the US, and I've never had anything but incredible download speeds from Fileplanet. I've been very happy with it, of course, all dependent on not using their "Download Manager".