Yeah, that makes sense; I wasn't really sure what you had beyond the cupola and scope, but once you start adding computers and stuff the price mounts fast, especially if you throw in your own power source (come to that, most motorized SCTs are intended to run on car batteries, which typically entails a car, though it needn't. )

Sounds like we're of a mind there; if I NEED the Nexstars computer, nice as it is, I probably need to NOT drop the cash for an 8+" SCT until I know wtf I'm doing. The Nexstars are NICE, don't get me wrong; the alignment process is almost idiot proof and very quick, and then it's basically point and click. But since I wanted one myself (someday... ) I remember the price on the old C-8 with and without computer VERY well:

$1200 w/o, $2000 with.

Again, back then the Nexstar only existed as a brand new 5" (and to underscore the point, it was $1200, so you could trade its computer for nearly twice as much aperture) but the Nexstar 8 usually goes for around $2000 new today, so we're basically talking 67% more money for a computer. And 67% of a four digit number is a LOT of money I don't have to spend, because I'm not an idiot (further evidenced by refusing to spend $2000 for the same optical performance available for a little over half as much. )

I've never used it before, and if I'm going to experiment with it to learn the risks I'm not going to start with hundreds or thousands of dollars. I believe my mother finally did get her money back because she got buyer protection--but she spent a few months arguing with the seller, the post office AND EBay. For $20. It was so much fun it soured her on EBay for good; I prefer not to have the same experience with an order of magnitude or more money.

Might be, but I'm not sure how weight bearing stacks up, and most things I've seen made out of fiberglass age badly, especially when exposed to the elements. There's plenty of 16th century antique furniture out there (all things considered but I don't know how much fiberglass stuff made today will be around in 2510.

It does seem that way to me, but if you screw up one of those mirrors you've got an expensive piece of junk. Maybe some or all of the retailers (though most of them seem to be direct mail) offer replacement mirrors, but I'd want to be very sure of that, and that it wouldn't be thousands more, before I attempted something like that. I mean, think about it: If nearly all the precision equipment is the mirrors and the rest is basically just polished sheet metal, where would you expect most of the expense to lie?

Yeah, I'm pretty much at home when on the computer, too, and when I'm not home the only NEED I have for one is to go online (which I don't really need anyway, I just enjoy it. )

I've still got a 286 myself; my dad got it for me for Christmas one year as an upgrade over my folks original (and I do mean ORIGINAL) PC. Took me forever to realize it had an internal hard drive (20 whole megs, man!) I used to sneer at people who couldn't write a decent batch file; I still know how to do it in DOS, but all the commands have been replaced by point and grunt (and pray Explorer doesn't decide to crash. )

To be honest the only Bushnell telescope I've dealt with was our baby refractor that was STRICTLY a spotting scope. People would come in all the time, see the $100 pricetag and think they were set, and I'd have to tell them, "Yeah, if you just want to watch birds or your neighbors wife, that's the thing; if you want to do astronomy let me show you this 3" altazimuth reflector for about $50 more, or better yet this 4.5" equatorial reflector if it's not too steep. " It was still the cheap weak sister of what Celestron and Meade made. I've heard they make decent binoculars, but my impression is the same thing is true of telescopic sights as telescopes in general: You get what you pay for (if you know your stuff) and you're generally better off going with a specialist dedicated to performance than a generalist dedicated to volume sales.