I know there are the official ones, but I remember some of the fanbased patches working better ... whats the best set of patches to use?

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510
MW Patch Project (which has disappeared from PES for some reason)

They can be installed in any order.
If you have GOTY you don't need any official patches.

Thought that was the case, looking across the Code Patch.

Does the map extension cause the map to 'gray out' like in ... FPS optimizer (I think thats the other one that extends the map).

Yes FPSOpt v2 does that. But MCP makes the viewable map area larger http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg282/MrKWMonk/Map-lorishwithnotes.jpg and in it's in colour and has as zoom function.

edit - just to add... now that you can extend the map this way I recommend staying with v1.92 of FPSOpt if you're going to use it. The MCP also makes MW vastly more stable then it ever was before.


-kwm

I wasn't planning on using FPS optimizer, just remember thats how it done it.

I also see there is a Python version? I have Python 2.6 +wxPython on my system already so wondering if it would also be worth using?

It doesn't really matter which you use, the advantage of the Python version is that it's a smaller download but other than that the patches work the same.