It's software, everything goes wrong, and in the event that it does not it only means that we have a bug that erases users hard drives that somehow slipped past the testers.
The pinky switch is the switch next to where your pinky finger is on the stick, I am unsure of the keyboard command right about now (I don't know if you can click it with the mouse).
So yes you enable that, and the NWS light will enable on the front panel then you are ready to go.
I am not familiar with that processor but I think your problem is graphics card related. This game doesn't handle crossfire (or SLI) at all. I would try to disable that before starting the game, and also try lowering any graphics fidelity or see if you can play with one screen for a bit and see if it improves your FPS.
Abolishing the weekly updates because some users where too butt hurt and started acting like children over "their" precious forums whenever a thread came up on the subject?
The weekly updates are one of the best things we have, don't let your community ruin them.
You can't really look at average time, also the 1.2.6 will be out for beta testing before that. Since some users even got the alpha from steam I don't think we are looking at that long of development time.
As far as what they've said 1.2.5 doesn't seem to be getting more patches.
You are talking about a toolset, edge has nothing to do with it. It might include some better tools for third party developers but its not edge as it has been described.
The whole point of DCS is that you do not need engine access to add modules.
I am pretty sure that you can write that in 20 feet high letters and some people here would still not get it.
But I had completely missed this, it looks really cool.
The tutorial I linked gives both HOTAS and keyboard commands.
I did fine learning only from youtube videos, it's not at all as difficult concept, just muscle memory.
Just use tutorials on youtube, and start with cool things like shooting mavericks, the rest will come later.
This one for example is really good, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1IoF2xKBCI
Don't do the training missions, they are boring.