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Subject: Reliability of Lx200
From: Brandon Jones
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Tue Apr 16 05:14:06 1996

I find yet another mention of a reliability check amongst users
disturbing.The data if collected would inevitably end up not being
read by the people that really need to read it,ie a publication in
a major magasine would only get it to the right people properly.
The fact that it was made up from information greatly biased by us as
a group would not help either as we in generation are the many who
are sold on the whole product anyway.
I have been reading this list and contributing to it for about 2
years and during that time as I have said before I have not seen
many posts about faults with the telescope.
Yes The TELESCOPE.
This is what I went out and bought twice , once for the ten inch
and later for the 12.The fact that it had a computer attached to it
was a secondary consideration ie I can not look at the sky through
the computer chips .Even if it was not there I have an incredible
good scope in the optics ,the mount etc etc.
These components ie the mount and the scope offer the same
good points and bad points that all other products on the market
in the astro industry have and this includes the gearboxes and motors.
So what do we tend to moan about in general it "appears" to be the
computer and its related components in a a ratio of several million
to one ie a few hundred in the scope to several million in the
computer , that all have to work.Please correct me if I am wrong but
I have not seen many posts on software bugs if any other than the
great star database sham which was a nit pickers paradise.
The computer industry employs vast legions of people to continously
repair ,debug the mountains of gear that are on the market at present
most of it less reliable than the computer assembly in the LX and yet
we accept this as normal.Yes people have had to change boards and
such but most of the reason is due to the inability for the owner
to pass the scope back to a dealer to fix not meade.If your car fails
the dealer fixes it not the car maker,if your Tv set fails the dealer
fixes it not the tv manufacturer.So consequently very simple
stupid easy fix faults are being fixed on a swap the lot basis which
is very inefficient and sounds 200 percent worse than what it is in
reality.I wonder what would happen to Ford if a loose lead on the
distributor cap in a car enabled the removal of the engine by the owner
and shipping it back to the factory to be fixed.Mixed in with this
is an expectation by some people that because you have this expensive scope
you should just switch it on and twenty seconds later be set up to
the absolute maximum precision without any work.This creates another
set of apparent or virtual faults that seem to be there but are
mainly dependent on severity by the individual users ability to have
patience to follow the manual properly, yes we all do it we ignore
the importance of certain key steps and just blindly bash away and
when it does not work we complain about it.
Very simply meade have done everything they can think of to make
it as simple as possible to get the best out of the scope but it
still needs user skill to achieve the ultimate out of the production
spread gains or losses inherent in your individual scope.
consequently I think that no report will ever satisfy the needs of
any potential new user if anything it will be yet another great put
off.The only solution is in ownership and practical experience ie
bite the bullet and if you do not like the taste sell it off and go
buy somebody elses product and do the same.Strange again though
isn't it that we again on this list hear of very few people who do
the above after once biting the LX200 bullet.

Brandon S.Jones