Aaaaah. I just spent 15 minutes typing and when I clicked post it didn't submit. Bugger.
I'll summarise...
Bob - having tracking and a way to find objects easily it's great isn't it? Very hard to go back to a manual scope now
Before I wrote last nights impressions, I left the scope tracking on the Orion nebula. It was low on the horizon and I thought I'd come inside, mess around for a bit and write up my impressions. ..I estimate around 40-50 minutes.
When I went outside I fully expected to need to use the finderscope to realign the object, or at least re-center it in the eyepiece. To my absolute surprise, it was still smack in the middle of my 24mm Panoptic. VERY impressive (to me).
Tracking on the moon and Jupiter, I noticed that it didn't take long to drift in my 10mm plossl. We're not talking seconds here, but I could visibly see the object shift over a period of about a minute.
Placing one small crater of the moon right in the corner of my 10mm plossl to test it, it quickly drifted out of view (10-15 seconds or so). PAE (pointing accuracy enhancement didn't fix this. More time with the scope may see me find a fix for the problem. It's nothing I can't live with either way.
For non-solar system objects, if I noticed the object drift, running PAE fixed it. It stayed smack in the middle. Absolutely no complaints (orion is proof of this).
Cheers