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Rally,
I agree with you. It is a bit like buying photoshop and all the processing add-ons these days when you can purchase PI that does it all and better.
If I was in your situation where the software came with the mount then I'd be saying the same thing. I've gone down a different path where I've been able to justify the cost of mainly Chinese hardware and have over time accumulated a suite of software at little or no cost that does pretty much everything I need.
My gear is permanently set up for most of the year and I take it to astrofest once a year for a 10 day stint. At astrofest I can use sharpcap and be polar aligned in minutes. At home I can't see the pole due to trees so resort to drift aligning. I checked it last week after many months since I did the initial alignment post last astrofest and it was remarkably good so I assume my obs footings are not moving much despite all the rain and clay in our area.
The use of SGP and platesolving allows me to return to the same object within a few pixels without having an amazing pointing model and I'll soon be adding camera rotation when the LiteCrawler arrives in a few weeks time so both position and angle should remain constant between sessions.
My qustions regarding polar alignment really started with why plate solving couldn't be used to speed up the drift process. I believe it can but I just need to spend the time working through the spherical trig maths and then working out how to automate the mount movement, camera and platesolving.
Cheers,
Peter
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