I'm kind of in a similar boat. My computer imploded awhile back, and I just got things running again. Bought the game from Just Flight last night, downloaded from Steam, patched with the latest beta and played around just a little bit.
The game works!
I haven't even started optimizing and fine tuning things yet, and I have an ATI HD6950 graphics card so there are some issues... but the game worked for me the first time. It's fun.
I didn't think of installing all the patches. I only installed the latest and assumed it would include all previous fixes. Is it a good idea to go back and do them all?