Set-up and locating the reference stars is fairly easy, and it is so much fun to take the tour of the sky. I've used this several times in an educational setting and it is fantastic for quickly pointing out stars and other celestial objects. In addition, it expands on the standard controller, giving you nine variable speeds instead of the standard four.
Once you use the Autostar you will never go back.
In late June, I moved up to the LXD-55 6 inch Shmidt-Newtonian (which uses the same 497 Autostar as the ETX line), and after one repair call for a motor problem it has easily met my expectations for visual work. While the short focus Newtonian may have a wider field of view and a much better sigting scope than the ETX's (as well as significantly more aperture for under $800), keep in mind that it must be POLAR aligned which is MUCH more difficult than an ETX Alt-Az procedure. I usually cheat and use Polaris instead of the true North Pole, but my accuracy is still predictibly within 30-45 arcminutes (1/2-3/4 of a degree or easily within the view of a 26mm eyepiece) on 90-95 percent of the slews with a rough setup.
Here's how to get the thing to work the way its supposed to on an ETX when you first get it. Do the first 6 in daylight to make the setup easier: *Skip Time for now *Enter Date (if you will observe that night) and nearest city *Enter your observing site name and adjust your latitude and longitude (use topozone.com or a topomap to find your location to the nearest minute (60th of a degree)) for your site *Train the drive using a distant (1 mile or more) object. Procedure is in manual. If done well you should not need to do it again for months *calibrate motors *turn off telescopeThat night (or any night): *set up and level telescope (use torpedo level and rotate tube to check level). This is only necessary if you know that your site is significantly (5 degrees or more) off or your tripod is set to less than maximum height *Aim north at Polaris (the North Star). Do NOT use a compass-it is often as much as 14 degrees off from true north. Use the two stars at the end of the big dipper to aim at the first bright-ish star at the tail of the little dipper. Align finder scope if necessary her. *level tube by bringing it straight down to horizontal *start alignment (easy at first, two star when you know the sky better). push the down scroll button if the star is behind a tree or other barrier. center in the eyepiece, not just the sighting scope. Press enter. Repeat for other star (preferably far from the first one-the farther the better) *Enjoy!
For the long term, get a star atlas or astronomy program and a range of good eyepieces/filters.
I deducted a star for the fact that Autostar displays thousands of objects nightly that are below the horizon and that the NGC and IC catalogs are nearly worthless unless you have a comprehensive atlas and know the catalog number of the object(s) you are looking for.
With the autostart, after taking about 15 minutes to go through the alignment process, we can just tell the Autostar what we want to find and it moves the telescope to the object for us. Without this, the only thing we would probably look at in the sky is the moon.
NOTE: If you're not planning to use your telescope to look at objects in the night sky (i.e. planets, etc), then you don't need the Autostar.