Just picked up my SkyScout from OPT this afternoon. First impressions
follow:

1. Unit is much lighter than expected. Not flimsy, just light.

2. Seems solidly sealed with nice, tight environmental covers.

3. Strangeness in the Battery Compartment. The unit takes 2 AA
batteries. When you open the Battery Compartment, you will
immediately notice that there are two "battery protective covers".
These are metal tubes that have "Do Not Discard" stickers on them. You
slip the batteries in the tubes and then insert them in the
compartment. No idea why (but I'm developing a guess).

4. Have played with it for about 45 minutes so far. Some notes on
using it:

i. You don't want to hold it to your eye like binoculars. The unit
has two dimly illuminated rings that you line up like target sights.
The unit seems to work best if you find the right distance so that the
two circles appear to be about the same size.

ii. I've been having a hard time focusing through the illuminated
rings to the object being searched for. It helps to dim the finding
circles (the dimmer is very conveniently located).

iii. I tried the "Identify" Mode on Jupiter. It pulled up Jupiter as
the most likely object but also listed a couple of stars in Virgo as
possibilities.

iv. I used Locate mode on Jupiter, Arcturus, Vega, Deneb, Cygnus,
Ursa Major, M51, M13, Antares, and Orion. For the objects, it did a
good job putting the object I wanted within the center third of the
viewfinder. For the constellations, it put me at about the "center of
gravity" of the constellation. It won't tell you that an object is
below the horizon. When I selected Orion, it happily said, "Down
here" (It did seem to point in about the right direction).

v. The audio programs run 40 seconds to about 2 minutes and are in a
pleasing female voice. There is also text and "scientific facts",
both of which are different from the audio (in other words, the audio
is NOT simply a spoken version of the text).

vi. The unit is quirky (highly skittish) when looking for items close
to the zenith.

5. Annoyances:

i. The "Go To Arrows" seem to be disabled during audio playback.

ii. I have a hard time reading the displays at low illumination
settings.

6. Bug?

i. The first time I selected the audio for M13, the unit turned off.
M13 was very close to the zenith and I suspect that I discovered the
reason for those battery sleeves (I suspect I lost electrical power
for a moment). When I repeated the experiment, it worked fine.

I'll post more observations as I use the unit more.

Clear, Dark Skies

Mark