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Another one for the collective brain trust. I haven't had CFS3 installed on this laptop until yesterday. When I go to fly, it seems as if time acceleration has been turned on and I have to fly that way. Almost unplayable. I haven't turned this on obviously, just seems as if the game is overclocked. Haven't run into an issue on other games yet, and this laptop is slower than my one at home. Quick system specs:

PANASONIC CF-50 LAPTOP
1.7GIG PROCESSOR
512MB RAM
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600 SERIES AGP (64MB RAM)

Think that is all the pertinent stuff. Any ideas??

(we're workin this in our private forum so's we don't spread any bad ideas while we figger it out....it's a poser so far but we think we know where it lies.....if we get a solution we'll post it).

Y'know......we forgot to mention here that Hunt figgered it out! So, for the record, in case anyone else runs into this:

- turns out to be an issue with how CFS3, and in turn the Windows function call to detect CPU speed, is "unreliable" (according to the experts) when using dual-speed energy-saving laptop processors such as Centrino.

These CPU's will run at different speeds depending upon wether you're on battry power or on A/C power. However, it sounds like CFS3 and the Windows function call only detect the plugged-in speed, so real CPU speed is not the same as what's reported, and ergo, the game performance is maladjusted and whacky.

The simple solution, which Hunt arrived at, was to simply yank the power and fly CFS3 on battery power. Which, I was amazed to see, had him online this weekend for hours on end. So a good Lithium battery is part of the solution too!

Anyway.....Hunt can correct me on anything I said above that's incorrect, but that's it in a nutshell. Let no problem go unresolved!

To add to the spectacular findings, Herr Stoopy came across a permanent fix.

Go to CTRL PANEL, POWER OPTIONS and select ALWAYS ON under power schemes.

I tested this out as well as Home/Office (didn't work). Upon making changes, I loaded up CFS3 and went into a Quick Flight. Fought off a couple Spits, landed and then took off. To my suprise, not once did exceed Mach 2 as I did before. It was like partaking in a catapult launch on take off prior to the fix.

This was posted (correct me if I mispeak here) on a forum about OFF in which similar findings were discovered using laptops.

If all else fails, I am testimony that unplugging the laptop and running on battery works! Only downside is screen darkens a tad and you're limited by your battery capacity.

However, I found out this weekend, that once loading into a flight, plugging into the power again while in flight showed no effects. Leads me to believe that CFS3 will detect computer speed at startup of a flight and run off it's findings. I do not know if you bounce out of a room and into another if it will re-scan the CPU or not. It does when flying campaigns or quick flight which I also tried on. So if you think you are running low on juice, plug in when flying and unplug when done and loading another flight up.