LOL! This is one of the funniest threads I've read in a while. How to tell someone to doesn't want to hear... that's 15 for you I guess.
Hoiking a 14" SCT onto a mount (albeit eqatorial, so without the weight of the fork arms) is still not like tossing a 20kg sack of beans onto your shoulder. You have to lift it to well beyond the full height of the dovetail in order to slide it on. It's a delicate instrument that cannot be jarred, bumped or dropped. By yourself? Don't think so. The reason you don't see many 14's in the field (can't remember the last time I have) is because in my opinion it's completely impractical. I base this on having insisted that my "little" 12" SCT was a field scope for 6 months. Never again. It's amazing how quickly your enthusiasm drops when you have to lug it out into your back yard
again and again. It becomes a chore, not a pleasure. Put it on a pier in an observatory? Brilliant. Different story - it's what they're built for.
On the quality front, I've had both high-end Celestron and Meade SCT's (not ETX-70 class, these are low-cost "family" consumer models, & basing your judgement on Meade as a whole because of this single experience is downright silly), and I'd say that the Meade mechanics slightly overshadowed the Celestron's in each case (eg. aluminium corrector plate flange washer ring on the Meade vs. flimsy plastic on the Celestron, geartrain quality, etc), and the optics were much of a muchness. I don't lend much credibility to most comparisons I find on the net because you're guaranteed to encounter bias and agenda-pushing. Go physically look at a 14" Meade ACF - they are somewhat different to your little ETX, and there will be very little difference in quality compared to your Celestron, if any. Compare both of these to the high-end scopes such as the AP's, Taks, RCOS, PlaneWave et al., and you'll see just how close the Meade and Celestrons are to each other. They are both great value scopes and are both well built for the money. They are still both mass-produced, and as such you will encounter one every so often that is problematic - and be sure to read all about it in some rant posted on a forum.
You're in the States, so service on either should not be a problem for you.