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I would have to say that for a keen but relatively inexperienced person like me and perhaps worth considering yourself if you can afford it the best thing about the new scope I have is the goto mount. Not even so much for the goto function (Although that is nice while I am relearning my way around the night sky) but the tracking component of the mount is just brilliant and makes light work of what used to be one of my frustrations, less time spent twiddling with the mount to keep things in view means more time at the eyepiece! As a relatively advanced newcomer (Through earlier interest) I am not sure if an equatorial mount would not be a recipie for frustration. I liked the idea of an equatorial mount but the ease and speed of setup of the alt-az goto has really converted me now that I have one. If I ever want to do serious imaging I will buy a wedge for it.
Further to my last post, The sky (All to briefly) cleared up last night so I got the scope out and tried my alignment on three objects much closer together than I had previously been doing to speed up the alignment process. Firstly the alignment was a lot quicker as I was not slewing over half of the sky and secondly it pointed quite accurately and tracked nicely straight off the bat. Later on in the night I replaced one of the alignment stars with Saturn as when it became visible the scope was maybe 1 degree off when slewing to it (My big frustration, it clouded over then and I got all of about 10 seconds of clear'ish viewing of Saturn when I wanted to try out a new eyepiece on it, an 11mm Nagler, even through a Nagler, clouds are boring!)
I gave up then and took it all inside at about 11PM, should have stayed up, my two hear old was crook and we ended up awake for half the night, at midnight when he first woke us it was a beautiful clear sky and it stayed that way until morning!
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