It's very possible I mentally added $100 to the price of the binocular viewer, too; it's been about as long since I've price checked it as it has since you did, 'cos it always struck me as extravagant anyway. But then, once you have the motor and a Schmidt corrector plate most other things just leave me thinking That's money I could've spent on more aperture. Can definitely see how access to a pro observatory might spoil you a bit; maybe you can get out to Yerkes some time. As you may know, it's got the first of three telescopes Hale built that were, in succession, the largest on Earth until Keck was completed (and at 40" it's STILL the largest refractor. ) Ironic there are people who actually WANT to be in Iraq (though it seems pretty crappy in terms of elevation) but then, that's where astronomy began, right?

As far as new ones go, my take is always the same: If you've got a decent sized motorized reflector now there's no reason to buy another until/unless you're ready for an 8" SCT, and no real reason for amateurs to get more unless they just have a few thousand dollars burning a hole in their pocket. It's too bad EBay's such a crap shoot, because you can often find an 8" SCT with tripod and motor for $500 or so, but wtf knows what condition it's REALLY in, or how it will arrive? I did see a good example of the price differences between various designs just now though: For what a motorized 8" SCT with database costs new, Orion will sell you a 14" Dobsonian. But you're really painting yourself into a corner with a Dob, and I wouldn't spend two grand doing that even if I could.

Han Solo has never steered me wrong; Han Solo is gold. It might've been Calrissian though....

Yeah, that's the thing, the software is great (Celestrons "The Sky" was my preferred retail one when I was "in the biz" ) but in the field it's only worthwhile if you have a laptop (not great for preserving night vision) or print out the charts in a redlight format. The one I linked has the standard skywheel on the front that you can set for time and date, but then you open it up and it has four pages of redlight maps for each season, a two page spread above and another below the ecliptic, with listings of coordinates and features printed below the maps in two columns. Also the first few pages were devoted to charts telling which planets were in what constellations for the next 5-10 years (hence mine is a little out of date, too, but it's easy to tell whether they were in retrograde and follow them through to where they should be now. ) It is laminated, 'natch. That, of course, seems to have gotten MORE expensive; we sold ours for $10 and even the fonts were the same, it just didn't have a company name on it.

BTW, I haven't forgotten our convo from the other day, I'm just waiting till I have the time for an in depth discussion to respond again.