Wheel Advice

[Lapo Nustrini]

Hi all,  I have a friend who is thinking of getting a racing wheel.  I've been out of the loop for too long now.  Can someone give me the run down on what is available and what one should stay away from?
Also, are there any compatibility issues with Windows7 and old hardware?

Thanks!

BTW, great to see you guys are still going.

Cheers,
Lapo

[dlogan]

The answer really depends on budget. Logitech Driving Force Pro is apparently pretty good for under $100,
G25's are under $200 but not made anymore and getting scarce, G27's are G25's with some stuff
improved but still brand new and closer to $300. If they want to spend more than that, there's Ball Racing
Developments, and FrexGP (insane Japanese stuff, with prices to match). The forums at Sim Racing
Mirror Zone would be a good place to look for info.

As far as Win7 goes, I've installed it (64-bit) recently and am extremely happy with it. I've had everything since
DOS 3.0 and this is the best operating system I've used. Coming from Vista64 (which I actually liked),
everything* runs, and almost everything runs _significantly_ better.

*there are a very few things that just will not run in a 64bit environment, so I run a WinXP 32bit machine
virtually. Check out http://www.virtualbox.org/

[Lapo Nustrini]

Thanks Dean.  I'll pass it on.  Of course, here in New Zealand everything is even more expensive...  A G25 is worth over $400 second hand...  And a G27 is more like $600 new.  (NZ$ = 72 cents US so you can see we pay a premium for this stuff.)

The annoying thing is that I have a spare Logitech LWFF (the original "good" wheel from logitech), but I read that its not compatible with Vista or Windows7 as it uses a different Force Feedback system and logitech never updated the drivers for it....
I guess I'll have to keep a WinXP partition just for that...

Thanks again for the advice.

Lapo