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I will chime in at this point with the usual comment about trying before you buy. Andrew - for such a big investment it is very very wise to have a look through a few scopes for comparison first. That will give you a much better idea of what you are getting yourself into. Start a new thread requesting info about observing nights that might be happening in your general area, and contact the nearest astronomical society and try to get along to one of their observing nights. Everyone is very happy to share and chat, so you will get a good sense of the different styles of scopes, and what you get for your money.
I am a dob man myself now, having initially gone for the computerised goto style telescope (in my case it was a Meade LX series). There is no doubt that the difference between a 5" and 10-12" is like chalk and cheese on deep sky objects, but if, for example, you were only interested in looking at the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and a few nice open clusters, then a 5" will be very satisfactory. If you were hoping to see galaxies and other deep sky wonders, then a 5" scope will prove rather unsatisfactory except under the darkest of skies. I found over time that I wanted more aperture so I could go deeper, and search out more distant objects. If you stay a visual observer, I think you will quickly experience the limitations of 5".
Good luck!
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