[JohnH]

It depends.

I have not used a cooled astronomical CCD camera so I cannot speak for those devices however:

Registax IMHO cannot handle large files from DSLRs (48Mb tifs) - it will choke. Registars is the pick for alignment but not free.

Registax is good for webcam images (planetary work) and works well with smaller images.

K3CCDTools has an excellent reputation - both for capture and processing from CCDs and webcams - as such it is a nice all in one - but not free.

Then you have the larger processing tools - IRIS, free but user hostile (there is no other way to say it), Images Plus, excellent but not free and Maxim DL and MaxDSLR, those last two are $$$.

So, what to do? If you buy a Meade LPI or DSI you will get a pack of s'ware with it that is good to get you started, AutoStarSuite. If you buy the equivalent Orion gear it now comes with a cut down version of Maxim - that might be all you ever need.

For those two cases use the package supplied and then review after 6 months to see if you need something more.

If you are a DSLR owner - you are going to need something fairly quickly to help you with focus in particular but also acquisition, dark frame subtraction, stacking, flats etc etc. If you can live with IRIS great but IMHO it is almost hostile enough to put you of Astrophotography - so try DSLR Focus to help with focus and image acquisition, then ImagesPlus and Maxim for processing, join the user groups and make your choice they are all excellent, think of it this way - you would not cut corners on a mount or optics and expect good results would you?

Then you might want to think about autoguiding if you plan on doing that some of the packages provide this feature also but if not you can use GuideDog.

If you have a regular of long exposure webcam (eg ToUCam) the choice seems pretty clear K3CCDTools is the way to go, and Registax for post processing.

Happy to go on but that should get you thinking on the right lines....