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Originally Posted by Fox
Nicely put Peter, Personally, whilst I think the LX850 shows some very nice innovation, I think Meade spent too much on the Meade Max and LX850 mounts - and conversely too little on an LXD75 replacement. They should have gone for higher quality design to really compete with the HEQ5, AZEQ6 and Celestron VX ballpark. The Meade LX80 was the wrong product IMHO. Fox
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I think that Meade couldn't really compete with the Chinese. These days, who the hell can?
As you mention, the LX80 mount, they announced it well before it was even manufactured, something like one to two years before it was even available. It was a great idea, with good design but very poorly executed (particularly given that it had very noisy drives), despite the attractive pricing. Because of the the long lead time, it allowed Skywatcher to take the idea of an alt/az mount to another level.
Although the Skywatcher AZ EQ6 GT was considerably more than the LX80, it was, by far, a much better thought out mount. Despite its price, it was an LX80 killer. Meade lost its advantage, due to the long lead time. Never give your competitor an idea of what you are doing.
I have the AZEQ6GT now, and I like it, although it did have a couple of very minor issues in its design, in my view, but easily rectified.
Meade, frankly, have lost the plot; that is if they actually ever had one.
If Meade is finally bought out by the Chinese, I am sure that we will end up with a much more innovative product, in a similar fashion to Celestron.
Cheers Peter