This is a great game! I still get it, (and the rest of the series) out and play them every so often. (I also still have a good pure dos computer available to do it on) I even have an origional disk with the commodore 64 version of elite 1, and the c64 to play it on. This game is also what got me to want to learn how to play the piano, that's how good the music is. And it has a large playlist.
There are available third party patches to fix most of the technical problems with the game. The only one I can remember that can't be patched is that the hardcoded missions only extend for about ten game years. (which would still take more than three and a half RL days non stop at the highest level of time compression, 1000:1, and which can't be held during combat if you want even the barest chance of surviving
) But combine that much hardcoded mission time, a very good "random" mission generator, the ability to completely avoid missions, and about 2,000,000,000 yes, two billion, stars systems to explore, all of which are reasonably (to an astronomer) sized, and can take more than 10 minutes to cross if you take the time to check out the sights, three main interstellar governments plus at least one alien group, and you won't be able to see everything that is in the game in any reasonable amount of time. And places that you have visited before are not always the same when you go back to visit again, especially if you are following the hardcoded missions. Also the enemies have almost as good a chance of taking you out as you do of taking them out if you want to fight. (and yes, you do see more massive military action if you take the military path, including missions where you have to help pave the way for a major assault)
And for those who don't want to go to the effort of making this game work right, there is a free java version out there that will work directly from windows. (and it is even listed as valid by the makers of the origional) To find it, you might search for "j2ffe" I think there is a link to it from the jades.org elite site, but I would have to look it up again.
This game is well worth trying, even just to fly around checking out the scenery, though if I remember right, the java version leaves out the intro movie.