I bought this scope with out actually ever seeing it. Something which I rarely do.
I read as many reviews as I could. I found one bad one. That person seems to have gotten a lemon.
I am an Electrical Engineer and work with things manufactured. As much as you may not want that
to happen sometimes things go out that are not as you would have them... So the customer returns it... Hopefully you don't loose them. =o/
I have used the scope for two nights so far. The overall quality is great for the price.
The scope has a solid feel and is a nice clean design. Optics are good. It's not a Takahashi. Nor does it cost 5 or 10k..
"There are good optics and cheap optics but there are no good cheap optics". Celestron maybe got close...

I bought the AC power supply. The plug on it does not really mate up with the socket on the scope.
It seems to be the plug on the power supply. Jiggle it the power goes out. REALLY annoying. I smashed the plug a bit and the problem is gone for now. At some point I will have to replace the plug.

Additional note: Do not let your roommate set up the scope... Yeah, he is an Engineer too. It would not align. Turns out he had the wrong time and date when I checked it this morning. He messed up the military time. Oh well... I fixed it today. I am going to try it again tonight. Not sure how easy the align will be. I will try to write more later.

Every now and then I like to view the night sky with a telescope. I bought a new Mead scope. I returned it. I bought the Celestron 8. Very good and easy to use! I up graded to the Celestron 11". Even better!! I still have the 11" Celestron and I am going to buy another 8". People told me that the 11" was heavy and hard to move... "Hay - I'm 6'3" & 100 lbs. of telescope to move around is no sweat". They where right. That is why I'm buying another 8".(I'm still keeping my Celestron 1100-XLT-GPS), and I will buy another Celestron 8" (for alittle more portability).. My point is: Telescopes are alot of fun. Celestron scopes are worth the money and time to learn them.
David, SMCA

im really picky, did alot of reading this is really nice made scope, better then a cheasy meade i had and returned cuz it was garbage and the view finder was bogus, and didnt work, [...] this scope is soild, steel tripod, steel base where motor sits. battery compartment is good (better the meade design) Solid Solid Built, no cheap parts.def a must buy, spend the extra money and get something you dont have to worry about, [...] is the best, gonna use them for now on. quick shipping, Celestron is the way to go

[...] Comes with 6 element 25 mm 1.25" Plossl' eyepiece, 1.25" diagonal, 1.25' visual back, easy to use finderscope, aperture cover, tripod, and accessory/eyepiece tray. Manual and quick start guide are well written. Set-up in minutes. Can use 8 AA batteries or connect an external source via 12 Volt connector (12 Volt car accessory or AC adapters are available as accessories). Since the single fork-arm must power motor(s) and the controller, the AA batteries will not last long if you do a lot of slewing. I have milked 4 hours out of them before. Optics are good quality with no imperfections or dust. Out of the box collimation was excellent. It even comes with a small bubble level to level the tripod. It is lightweight, portable and pretty stable on its tripod. Settles in 2-3 seconds after a normal bump. Definitely a grab and go telescope. If you store it with the Optical Tube Assembly (OTA) attached to the single fork-arm, then all you have to do is grab the OTA/fork-arm assembly and the tripod, step outside, connect the tripod to the OTA/fork-arm assembly via the 3 screws attached to the tripod, power up and viola you are ready to view planets, stars, nebula, and galaxies (if you have decent seeing conditions). The OTA is not only detachable (simple clamping with a knob handled screw), but can be adjusted forward and backward of the fork-arm to maintain balance if you have heavy eyepiece assemblies or a camera. This allows you to create clearance between the OTA back and the single fork-arm assembly base. The boxes it came in can be used for storage and transport. Everything worked well. The NexStar controller gives you several alignment options as well as multiple ways of selecting objects. It contains a user defined portion in its database and provides info on objects you have selected. It has 9 slewing speeds and 6 tracking modes (Alt-Azimuth, North and South EQ, Sideral, Solar and Lunar). Its default mount and tracking is Alt-Azimuth, but you can purchase a wedge accessory for the 2 equatorial tracking modes and use it for astrophotography. The NexStar controller has several quick alignment modes. The one I use is the 3 Star Align method. Just input your latitude and longitude (or alternatively, select the closest city to you from their database), put in the date and time, then select 3 bright sky objects, by centering them one at a time in the eyepiece and entering them into the controller, then let the controller calculate and align the scope to your sky and you are ready. Once you know how to do this, then it only takes a few minutes. I highly recommend it for entry-level or intermediate users. I even found Celestron Customer Service to helpful the one time I called to ask a question. [...]

Junk. Telescope would not mate with tripod. I had to fabricate new mounting hardware. Hand controller cannot be re-mounted in its recess. Telescope will not respond to manual commands while auto-tracking. Celestron tech support takes weeks to respond, all they could offer was "Gee, it should work." My next telescope will not be a Celestron.