Shawn Grant is wrong about GOTO.

We all know Shawn Grant has gone around posting many very silly things
about GOTO scopes.
Mr. Grant contends that GOTO is bad for our pastime. That it encourages
lazy stargazing. This isn't the point. It isn't that GOTO encourages bad
habits and discourages people from learning the sky the bad thing about it
is this:

It makes people buy telescopes they have no business owning. First of all ,
almost without exception these scopes and the GOTO systems just don't work
as advertised. The example of Meades LXD50's and more recently Celestrons
ASg line should bare witness to this. Without serious modification these
scopes never do much better than happening to point at the sky, most of the
time, sometimes they point straight down.
Second most novice users that purchase these gimcracks haven't a clue how
to use an EQ mount. The owners manuals usually shed more darkness and
confusion than light on this basic bit of telescope using. Angry bitter new
users . People after a night or many nights of fruitless work give up on
these scopes and presto another Ebay auction or a impossible to decider ad
at Astromart. Much like the promise of Linux these scopes do nothing but
drive people from the pastime.

So Mr. Grant. this is one time you are wrong in your advice.