RE: updating your installed simulator
I know several folks who did the G3 -> G3.5 Update/Upgrade via dialup... it seemed to work fine when 3.5 was first released, but I know KE has had online updating issues since then. The last I checked, you could also get a file download that would do the patch update (instead of using the launcher to update) but it was only listing version 3.5.033 (the crummy one) and not 3.5.044 (the good one that's now public via the launcher. Makes it kinda hard to borrow someone's high-speed to d/l the update and burn a disc...
Personally, I haven't used anything slower than a 2MB connection in years, but I can certainly sympathize with the dial-up crowd...
-Case