Hey all!
Okay, so I am a bit behind on my email, but I saw this and wanted to
clarify a few points:

Paul Goelz wrote:

<snip>

> Well, I use Earth Centered Universe (ECU) and an old '486SX25 laptop with
> 4MB and an 8250 UART and it works just fine. I doubt that you could buy a
> computer that crummy these days!

I use the shareware version on a 386SX-25 (!) pen computer with 10 meg
memory, and it's useable. About a 10 sec screen refresh with high
precision turned off and in star atlas mode (as opposed to local horizon
mode- more processing for that). Not snappy, not dog slow, just not
bad. I use the registered version on everything from a 486DX2-50 to a
PII-233 and it's great!

>
> It takes about 10 seconds to do a full presision calculation of the sky,
> but other than that it works flawlessly. It allows me to control the scope
> and view its position as crosshairs on the map, as well as slew to any
> object in its database (ECUs, that is). That includes, of course, comets
> and asteroids.

> I personally find TheSky to be a fascinating piece of work but way
> overblown for my needs. It is also considerably more expensive than ECU,
> which is shareware, downloadable off the net, and costs only $50 to
> register. And I might add, it does not crash. Ever. That's a biggie for
> me.

Ditto here. Never had a crash in over a year of use on *any* machine
with either version.

> The shareware version has everything the registered version has except
> (I think) comet and asteroid calculations.

Almost right. The registered version (CDROM) has the GSC, images, and
more object info (i.e. click on NGCxxxx and along with the mag., RA and
DEC, and other basic stuff, a short but complete description comes up.)
as well as comet and asteroid calcs. I'm sure there are other features,
but can't recall off the top of my head right now. But, I too give a
resounding recommendation for ECU

>
> Paul Goelz
> Rochester Hills, MI

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| Michael Smith | I can only make one person |
| Ft. Worth, TX | happy each day. Today is not |
| USA 97ºW 32ºN | your day. Tomorrow doesn't |
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