Mak-Cass vs AT1010, Apogee 80ED, or Televue Pronto

Help! My mind is feeling Schizophrenic(Hope one of us spelled that right! Shutup! NO, you Shutup)Anyway, here is my dilema. I am looking for a good scope that I can use for terrestrial(birdies and other things earthbound)and some astronomy(moon, planets, maybe M42 and M57) I really don't want to spend a ton of money(or even half a ton), so I would guess an apo is out. I considered a Mak-Cass, but since the focal length is so long, I am concerned about the FOV. Could I get some suggestions? and all of us thank you.

Bob and company

I would suggest skipping the Mak (while some, such as the ETX 90 are very good, the focal length is quite long). I owned an Apogee 80ED for a while and would skip it in favor of a Stellarvue AT1010. The Apogee had ok color correction, but not great and the image was just too soft at higher magnifications for planetary vewing. I bought in new from Apogee so the quality control on those scopes is questionable. The AT1010 seems to be more consistent than the Apogee and if you bought a used one that has been well kept you should have no problems. Also, the 80ED has hardly any backfocus with a 2" diagonal (in fact a special recessed 1.25" adapter is needed with some eyepieces). The Pronto is nice but the loss of 10mm of aperture will make a difference for astronomy. I should tell you that I finally had it with the cheap small scopes and bought a Vixen FL80S a while back. While it isn't a fair comparison, the Vixen outperformed the Apogee by leaps and bounds.

Joplin