Sky Commander and NGC-Max

I'll be adding digital setting circles to a new 18" Dob soon and am confused by some of the chat I've read about these two systems. Are the differences between them enough to make one preferable to the other?
Thanks for any help.

Bob Polcyn

Depends...the Tangent boxes (JMI, Celestron, Orion, etc) require you to level the scope and to achieve certain "warp" factors, while the Sky Commander requires none of those. Simple two star alignment and you are ready to observe. In addition, the Sky Commander has over 9,000 *unique* objects, meaning that (from the Sky Engineering website) "...we do not take the number of objects in each of the included catalogs and total them. That would be an inflated number, as there is a fair amount of overlap. ALL Messier objects are included in the NGC catalog, for example, as are several in the star cluster catalogs and the Uppsala Galaxy Catalog."

The Sky Commander also has an equatorial platform function wherin you can turn off the sidereal clock, and use a reset button so you don't need to realign when you reset the platform. Sky Commander also has a built in dew heater that kicks in when you run it on 12v (it runs on external 12v or internal 9v), but then again the red LED of the Tangent boxes does not require heating. The LCD of the Sky Commander will become really sluggish in very cold weather if you don't use 12v. I like the red LED of the Tangent boxes better, although the green/yellow of the Sky Commander has never bothered me.

All in all, I prefer the Sky Commander, but both work quite well.

Doug
Midway, FL