I gave FSX:SE a try and I must say, so far I am satisfied!
I wasn't expecting the sim to run significantly better nor anything like that, I had my FSX heavily modified and running as smooth as a 32bit mem hogger can. Use it daily on VATSIM and mostly use PMDGs.
But there where good reasons for giving it a chance such as:
+ I am really tired of the DVDs and losing my key.
+ Already have steam with over 100 titles, and over 80 friends, don't mind having FSX in my steam game library.
+ $5 USD? Nice...
+ Steam offers me video streaming, so I can show my friends and convince them to join the sim community. (Being sold on steam makes it even easier, already 5 of my friends on my list bough it because of this.)
+ The steam multiplayer makes it very easy to start up a game with my friends and let them get the hang of the sim.
+ Participate in the birth of a new younger sim community.
So I tried it, and I must say, it does run smoother on higher settings! A little bit but it is noticeable.
What about my add-ons? Well, I managed to install and run pretty much all of them! (ORBX, REX, EZDOK, all of my CARENADO/A2A/CPN SIM planes, all of my Aerosoft airports.) Except for my PMDGs and FSPassengers. I am bummed about that, but im sure PMDG will support FSX:SE very soon.
I can even keep flying on VATSIM with VPILOT, even the model matching worked great!
I trully gained more than what I lost, which I should re-gain soon enough.
I already uninstalled my boxed version of FSX and I strongly doubt Ill be installing it again.
For $5 USD, it was without a doubt a great deal!