Before I came to the Dark Side of AP (Cooled CCD, Guiding etc) and before I knew how to polar align and drift I used a Gstar-ex with a filter wheel. It allowed me to see all the deep sky objects in real time and it took nice pictures of the planets and terrific pictures of the moon. Combined with a filter wheel for colour it really was a great way to start. The best part was being able to show friends and family what I was looking at on a monitor without having to process the data.
I still have that Gstar-ex although it doesn't get any use these days (must think about putting it up for sale on the classified section)
All the best
Paul
