Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this telescope for my girlfriend for Christmas. She had been wanting a telescope for sometime so I decided this would be the perfect gift. I was looking for a scope that wouldn't break the bank but wouldn't be a piece of junk either. I looked at models from Meade and Celestron but ultimately decided on this one. I chose this over the refractor telescopes mainly because it seemed that to look into the refractor scopes would require a lot of bending over whereas this one has the eyepiece closer to eye level which makes viewing easier. Also, go for the equatorial mount, it's much easier to track things in the sky using it as we quickly found out. Ok, so how was it? Well it came in a big box (which made the g/f crazy with this HUGE gift under the tree!) and everything was nicely and neatly packed. Everything appeard to be of high quality and good build; which is typical of Orion products from what I've read. The instruction maunal on assemble was pretty scarce. Anyone who's pretty handy at building things will be able to figure it out; but it's not the easiest thing either. This is mainly because of a lack of pictures to go along with the assembly steps. Well we got it assembled and waited for dark. It was pretty cold and we just did some viewing of the moon and a couple of stars from the front yard. A hazy night with tons of light from the street didn't provide the best viewing conditions. That being said the moon looked amazing!! The detail was outstanding. We were able to also see the Orion Nebula and looked at other stars. I can't even imagine what it will look like on a good clear night. We're looking foward to bringing it camping with us where there will be some great viewing. The included software is also extremely useful and fun to use. The software alone is easily worth more than half of the price of this scope. Even if you hate the scope; you can learn a lot of great information from the software. Overall this is a great scope for the amateur astronomer. It's cheap enough that it won't break the bank (good especially if you're not sure if astronomy is for you) but still plenty good enough for some great viewing. The instruction manual could be better but the quality of the software and of the scope itself more than makes up for the poor manual. I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for a good budget scope! *Update* We've had this scope for about 16 months now, and it's fantastic!! We have taken it with us several places camping and have gotten to see some really great stuff. It's fairly easy to find the planets and even a galaxy or two. The only downside is that it takes up a lot of room in the car when we camp; but this would be true for any decent telescope. So not so much a problem with this one specifically, but with telescopes in general. Even to this day, we're still amazed just looking at the moon. The details and "awesomeness" of it never get old. Really looking at everything never gets old. I'm so glad we have this scope! *December 2010 Update* I thought I would give an additional update. We have had this telescope for 4 years now. It's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough. Recently we were looking at Jupiter and could make out all of the Galilean moons as well as being able to make out red striping of the planet itself (still haven't been able to see the great spot!). All of this from the front of our yard in the city. A buddy of mine got a 7" reflector scope, and while his can see much deeper and give better resolution, this one is still tops in my book. It's easy to transport and move around and still provides great viewing. We just love taking it camping with us - get 50 miles out of the city and the "awe factor" grows exponentially. Try taking a huge super powerful scope camping, or seeing anything cool with one of the cheap toy-store ones. For price and features, you can't beat this one.