I backed Star Citizen very early on, during the first couple of days it was available, and came into Elite later, based on posts from Flossy here a while back. It cost me 150$ to get in when I did, which was less expensive than those at the start, and now similarly, it is 1/2 that at around 75 bucks, with a ton more stuff than when I bought in. It is VERY worth it. It is further along than SC/Sqrn 42/etc, and is excellent, excellent, excellent. Well worth the 75 bucks - between this and some of the new DCS stuff, there is a lot of good stuff out there to hold us(me) over until the new Aces High beta comes about.
If you like Space sims, the old Elite, or just something very well done with a vast, vast scope - spend the 75 bucks on this before any other game, even including Star Citizen, of which the Arena Commander can become boring quickly, although it is fantastic as well in it's own right.
Lusche, that's unfortunate re hardware. I know that the new nVidia Shield gaming tablet can handle it steaming from a PC, PC Gamer did a review on Elite with the Shield. I don't think you would need a massive upgrade to get it running, hopefully sometime you can swing that, as I have a feeling that AH3 will probably need it as well.
Article on Elite/Shield, there is also several recent Elite articles on PC Gamer in the last 10 days or so if anyone cares to look.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/08/01/can-you-play-elite-dangerous-on-an-android-tablet-turns-out-you-can/http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/08/05/the-pleasure-of-space-trucking-in-elite-dangerous/http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/30/elite-dangerous-enters-standard-beta-is-still-quite-pricey/Groovy Bruvy - Recent PC Gamer article and pics -
Interestingly, using the mouse for guiding your ship in Star Citizen gives you a massive advantage over HOTAS players. The reason for this is the guns are on gimbals, and the first couple inches around your target xhair in your Hud in your ship in SC, it actually just moves the guns, not the ship thrusters. You are able to be much, much more precise with aiming your weapons using the mouse to do this. Think of it like trying to aim in a first person shooter with a joystick or a mouse - 99 percent of players would agree I think that a mouse is much more precise and accurate for this purpose. In SC, using the joystick to maneuver the ship, the gimbal xhairs just don't track as precisely or accurately as they do with a mouse. I've sent in numerous emails to the development team, saying that if they enable trackIR for the purpose of gimbal aim, the HOTAS guys will be able to counter the mouse guys using trackIR combined with their sticks to aim. I hope they do so, and the responses have been positive from most when I've brought this suggestion up. Time will tell.