From FS9 to FSX - My experiences so far

Hi everyone,Well first let me introduce myself since I'm new to these forums (long time reader, but first time actually posting). My name is Andy, a lifelong aviation and FS enthusiast, and a software/electronics engineer in the 'not so real as it gets' world!Thought I would share my FSX experiences so far, especially as I see so many people having problems. I started out there too, and was pretty dissapointed at first, especially compared to my FS9 setup which I can run maxed out and that I have lots of add-ons for - now I love the new sim!I wasn't going to buy FSX immediately, due to the usual worries the new sim wouldn't run on my hardware, which is good, but not super state of the art. Well, my girlfriend knowing how much I love flight sims, and that I'd mentioned the new one was coming out - she bought me FSX deluxe, so I was compelled to play it!!!! LOLFirst impressions - well I liked the default aircraft, way better than in previous versions, 737-800 is great (few quirks aside, which I expect from the MS planes, but okay for now till I download some FSX specific one's as they appear or try moving some FS9 one's over). But performance and look --- yikes! It was awful. Well, after reading all the forums here, and some other places, I was able to tweak my fsx.cfg and system in general (drivers etc.) and I upgraded my RAM to 1.25GB and now I am running medium high (and high on some things) with a few trade off's, but it looks fabulous, and frame rate, while not stunning is a flyable 10-25FPS (goes down to 10, and occasionally a bit lower, in REALLY bad weather, but only really on the ground at busy airports). Not perfect, but I keep finding new tweaks to improve it, so still a work in progress for sure, and I can have the jetways and most the ground traffic no problem, so they add a bit (if you like waiting 2 minutes for a jetway to extend! LOL).I wish they had enhanced the ATC a little more since I tend to fly the heavy jets IFR - but guess you can't have everything.Can't wait for add-on's to start coming out for this, and I'm aware some later FS9 planes can be made to run, so I'll try at some point.Many thanks to everyone on these forums who offer advice how to 'tweak' this sim to make it run better, the difference is amazing, I've made many changes based on information I got here. I could barely run it on fairly low settings at first, now it looks great, and flies with not a single stutters. So a few quirks aside, which I'll ask questions on in other posts since this is getting long (!), I'm really enjoying it!Also I hope this encourages anyone who feels ready to give up on FSX, I do understand the frustration, and know that adding more RAM made a HUGE difference in my case :)