Mike - from leaving Wiruna where the camera, laptop, CCDWare software and mount all had issues, to going out the other night when everything performed absolutely faultlessly... Strange! I didn't do anything different.
Peter - you're right about the generally low noise of the CCD. My M8 shot with no cooling is testament to that. I never go lower than -20'C but I know others that strive to get every fraction of a degree they can out of their chip, even using water cooling in winter. And then the SBIG documentation suggests running it at -7'C
I'm sure someone could throw theoretical noise-maths at it to say there's a huge improvement, but as you say, I can't see it. I think these rules might have applied to early generation CCD's, but now the rules need re-writing.
Regards,
Rob.