I've got something called a Gravis 'stinger', it's apparantly one of the only devices that is made to work on laptops. Like your problem, it is tricky to get it working for every program. But for FS works fine and it has quite a good feel to it (i.e digitally proportional). Plugs into one of the serial ports and it uses some software to configure it as a game port. Not as good as a joystick...but it does the job..
hope that helps.