Well, yes it is interesting.... I think the Hardware issue is holding FSX back but Hardware gets updated and people will move on. As for the Addon issue, most major developers (LDS & PMDG included) are only dealing with FSX from now on which will force it forward. (Cast your minds back to FS2004 luanch, it was just the same!)
As I said in my post above, I already have FSX running stable at 15 FPS now and I can get 30+ FPS when not around a lot of dense scenery or traffic...... This is improving all the time. Many tips and tricks are available to get it working happily on our current hardware, admitedly, it's not blisteringly fast, but it good..... (My FS system currently is a P4-650@3.4ghz, 2gb DDR2 6400 Cas 4 RAM, Radeon X1800 XT 256mb GFX card and a Samsung Spinpoint SATA 2 250gb HDD)
As for the game itself, well I can only speak from experience. I love the mission gameplay idea, I like the new layouts and menus, I like the new scenery and views, I like the new WX engine, I love the wet runways! I HATE the online gameplay mode. (I will stick to flying offline or on VATSIM/IVAO for now)
I am fortunate, I can run it now and I can afford to upgrade my system slowly over the next few months. As Murray said, I think there will be no major developments on FSX until DX10 becomes mainstream and this will not be for the next 3-6 months. Don't forget, the boxed version of FSX that you buy is not DX10 compatible anyway, a patch will be made available in the future. I have run FSX on the RTM version of Vista and my setup with XP Pro was running about 0.5 FPS slower than Vista so there is a slight improvement by running on Vista.
The Quad core debate is a moot point.... APARENTLY! FSX does not take advantage of multicore processes and although you will see a slight advantage by running all your other stuff like AntiVirus and other background tasks on one core and FS on another, FSX can not be split between cores or have traffic and AI running on one core whilst panel and dynamics are running on another..... at this time!!!!! No announcement has been made to say whether it will be patched in future for this so I doubt it will.
The debate will rumble on, I think in 6 months time, if we run this poll again, the outcome may be somewhat different, only time will tell though!