I have used CH toys since I useda fly Air Warrior on my Amiga 500 in the DOS arena.
That first joystick still works fine, I gave it to my brother and he gave it to his son.
My last 'gig' as a 3d artist, I was given a complete CH USB setup ..turned down the rudder pedals as I have a thrustmaster set that works fine ..atm the pedals are packed away somewhere tho, and have been for ..sheesh . 5 years or so ..it has been that long.
The stick an throttle tho .. umm ..more buttons, more hat switches, and more control axis' than AH supports, purty much if I need a button, axis, or hat, I got several to choose from.
I try to group them by function to make it easy when yer in way deep and reaction times are at a premium.
The throttle offers a measure of control that the lil wheels just do not provide. Think of a possible position fidelity measured 0-100 compared to one measured in 0-10,000 ..plus the slider offers a long slide from zero to max ...it is no problem at all to nail 41 inches of manifold pressure even on the smallest dial.
Even this set is 4 years old now.. I had to dig em outta the boxes and blow the dust off (literally ..they were out in the shed, in Arizona, for 3 years) ..and they work flawlessly.
The stick is the same way .. very easy to get a fine degree of control, very high fidelity for positioning (0-30,000 or some such)
The new Control Manager from CH has cured all the WinXP problems ..making a single mapped device out of the stick an throttle, so AH can use all the buttons, axis, and hats that it supports.
-GE