your paying for a 500 dollars cheap Carbon fibre tube. you still have to buy a decent corrector, throw the focuser at somebody you don't like driving at about 150km/h and then get a decent one (3-800 dollars), sort out the secondary spider (are you good in the machine shop?) and the primary cell (200 dollars and then you have to fit it). then you might be getting to a decent kinda telescope with average mass produced optics
Dave you have to remember that it has 17% VAT on it
go to
http://www.orionoptics.co.uk/CT/ctra...28ota%29t.html and you don't have to pay the 300 odd dollars to telescope optics.
Trust me that this is far better than the one you initially sent though. If your just starting out it might be a wise word to start with something a fair bit smaller unless you have people that know what they are doing around you.
Do also factor in you will need OAG (3-500 dollars) as the tubes flex and no carbon fibre doesn't delete this issue, also you will need a set of high quality collimation tools (250 dollars). no a laser or any permutation of a laser will not be good enough look at auto collimator's as a minimum, a sight tube and a Cheshire eye piece other wise your just wasting your time pretty much.
Getting a newt working as it should isn't just going down to your local corner store and picking one up. With floating optics unlike RC's and the like that you can lock down the primary and the secondarys move readily.
Here is the beginnings of a guide that i have written in relation to setting up cheap dobs/newts for AP. This includes the telescope your asking about. The guide is at the bottom of the page
Is what I guess i'm saying 
