Hello Andrew,
Yes you can use adaptive optics as alternative for autoguiding.
But I'm not sure your gone save money.
The autoguider I use now for 2 years is a 50 euro webcam a 100 euro Newton and a 60 euro shoestring cable.
You can use a lower class telescope drive. But lower class don't mean that it cost less money.
When you read this.
http://www.dfmengineering.com/news_t...e_gearing.html
you can see a friction drive is a hi class drive for a low price.
That's why the Mesu-Mount in this very complete overview comes out very good.
http://lambermont.dyndns.org/astro/pe.html
If you want to save money on the telescope mount the next good candidate under the 7500 has a load capasity that's much lower than the Mesu-Mount. It has a meridian flip and all other disadvantages a worm gear has in it.
The Mesu-Mount is a very stiff mount with a good dynamic behavior.
Much stiffer than a German mount with tripod. The 130kg is no problem as you can see in the PE graph. That are the real world measurements on arc.sec level with 130kg telescopes. I didn't try it not jet but I wouldn't make a problem of it to mount 200kg telescopes on this mount.
Best regards,
Lucas Mesu
www.mesu-optics.nl