This past Saturday, I ordered the Meade LX200 10″.  I ordered the telescope from skiesunlimited.net and mostly dealt with Gary, one of the two partners there.  It’s a decent sized shop in Glenmoore, PA and is probably the closest specialy store for telescopes within 2 hours of my house in New Jersey.  Gary was helpful in narrowing down my choices based on what I want to do with this scope.  In general, I decided for a reflector with the GoTo capability since I mostly want to do observing and make it user-friendly for kids, etc. to look through the scope.  The Meade should also allow me to do novice-imaging as I go along.

The LX200 comes with GPS so the scope knows where it is located.  I was comparing it to the LX90 model which also now comes with GPS.  However, when you compare the features, the LX90 is primarily missing the microfocuser (helps you focus finely).  If you add that to the LX90 as an option, the price difference between the two works out to a few hundred bucks — so since the LX200 has a more stable mount (as I understand from some forums) and has better gearing for sky-tracking per the spec-sheet, I opted for the LX200.  Should be here in about a week…