Stock FE 2 is better than FE gold ONLY in Vista or Windows 7 (cause the bump mapping is only available in Vista or Windows 7)
I'm not going to upgrade my OS (XP), Windows Vista sucks a lot so i will keep playing with FE Gold
Anyway, bump mapping is only available for the stock planes and my favourite plane is not a stock plane (Morane type N)
You are right, Today's computers are very cheap (i remeber the day i spent 500 $ in a voodoo 3000 card LOL) but I can't spend 1000 $ in a new computer since i lost my job (f***ing crisis). I have a Sapphire Radeon X1550 512 MB and a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz and ROF runs very very slow (but i can play FE with maximum settings in textures, shadows and effects, and it looks and plays superb )