Thanks for the replies so far, much appreciated.
At the moment, I have an oldish (4years) Acer machine. Am not at home at moment - typing this on ipad - so without looking, can't remember specs offhand. It's on Windows 7, and reasonably runs somw quite memory hungry applications, but not at lightening speed..... If it's not suitable, I will probably get another, so what would be a reasonable spec, and price to pay?
Is x-plane available as a totally working, (albeit for a short time), full spec download? I tried microsoft flight sim on a friends PC once, but still remain pretty clueless. A few people I know have tried a sim, but have given up, as they cannot get the hang of it. (So I can't ask them anything usefull)!
On the subject of the pedals, I was thinking of not getting any, and just getting a good joystick.
One other question - do these simulators run in an autopilot mode, so you can observe whats happening as well?
Apologies for all the questions, but its a minefield out there for people like me