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I agree with Malcolm, the more technology you have, more areas for failure even if it is rare.
you can always get a non-goto dob and use good printed setting circles to locate objects. no power required and you learn the night sky and you'll learn star hopping as well.
Most of the Dob's do come with printed Alt and Az setting circles and once you know how to use it, it becomes very easy and stress free.
It can be frustrating to manually locate objects in the begining, but that's part of the fun, cause the elation you feel once you've located it manually is really good.
Aperture also helps. A collapsible 10" non-goto is a good start IMHO.
I've got an EQ5 pro, and while the goto works well most of the time, you have to get an accurate 3 star alignment to start with and it can always vary which makes you want to correct it or align again and so on. A reflector on a GEM is not neck-friendly.
A Dob for planetary can be a bit frustrating if the mount movements are "sticky" and you're at high magnification as you need to keep adjusting to follow the planet and you might have difficulty making small adjustments. Good eyepieces help a lot as well. There are lot of threads here where people have improved movement on factory shipped Dobs.
I haven't seen many people using refractors for visual and what their experience is, but you might want to do some research on that.
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