Hi Space ace
Welcome to IIS (although I've had a sabatical and have only just looked at the site for some time). It is a great resource full of people willing to help at any moment.
I have your scope and have found it user friendly and great fun. The 4" diameter opyics allow only so much detail to be viewed of brighter objects, I find (with my eye sight and in light polluted SW Sydney) that anything below mag 10 -11 is too dim for the little mak but planetary viewing Jup, Saturn and Mars is fine. Again not much detail but you will be impressed with Saturn.
I drive mine using the celestron power pack although any 12V pack from an auto store will do. I find this will run for longer than i wish to observe whereas the AA batteries willl be sucked dry in 1-2 hours max.
Although the optics are pretty steady in Maksutov Cassegrain designs, I found mine to be slightly out and minor collimation was required which gave much better results when imaging planets.
Its a great little starter scope, I take it camping and anywhere else when dark skies are guarunteed. Very quick to set up (10 mins if dismantled from the tripod) You wont be dissapointed. I would like to purchase something larger but would never consider divesting of the nexstar due to its portability factor.
Good luck with it. If you need any advice just shout and I'll offer whatever I can.
Here are a couple of links which you may find useful. I have an image album at
http://tech.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/NexStar4
and at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/nexstar/
This site is also extremely useful
http://www.nexstarsite.com/
Contact me if you run into trouble, happy to help