Meade ETX-80AT-TC (270 x 80mm) Telescope

Pros: Auto skew, lightweight and easy to manipulate. Very affordable!
Cons: High power slop. Needs fine tuning out of the box but thats a given.

Got this scope for Christmas. I was plenty excited about getting one after years of wanting a scope. I am a total amatuer in the field. The last scope I had was a long red Tasco many many years ago. I will review this just as I see it. I've never ...

Pros: Less money, that's all.
Cons: You will learn why people store these things and never use them.

I am a total novice when it comes to telescopes. Here is the problem, everyone out there recommends dobsonian 6" w/out autostar (to save you money). If your a novice, you still may have trouble with autostar finding anything up in the sky. So why would you even be capable with a dobsonian or any other telescope with out autofind? I have this telescope (ETX-80), and have had it for 2 weeks and am still trying to align it with autostar to find anything other than the moon. Very frustrating when the tracking mechanism needs alignment. They say go with a celestron 8 with autofind (Nexstar 8) to be happy. One major problem,it costs $1399.00. ETX-80 is substantially less but does not deliver. Piece of crap scope on a fancy computerized finder motor that doesn't always work. You have to pay big bucks for the good stuff if you don't have experience to find what's out there. I will put my ETX in the closet or try to sell it on Craigs list. It sucks.