Just my 2 cents,
if you get the latest x-plane (which has the best flight dynamics of all the stuff around), you can really use it to get some procedures and automatic tasks in your brain (especially if you start flying online which is pretty similar to the reality -> of course it depends who you find on the ATC side but usually they're good). Of course you can learn some basic principles (throttles, yaw, pitch, roll effects), and if you get some realistic scenery (usually for free or you can make your own for your area using some free tools) if you can also practice some vfr navigation. These are the pros, cons are that you don't get any feeling from the controls (at least not in a normal user configuration) so you won't learn that, but you can always spend some time and build a cheap and effective small cabin with plywood, force-feedback controls and a cheap motion platform which will really make it a different story (and really usefull when weather sucks).
So definitely: x-plane + real scenery + ff controls + motion platform = great fun and learning
fabio