marvindj I have been using the S50 for almost 8 months now and I am sorry to say that I do not share your optimism. Do not get me wrong, I like the S50 and I am a big fan, I am very impressed by what you can do with such a low cost unit. I like the price, I like the portability, it is an amazing product.
I am less than impressed by the SeeStar software, especially by the complete lack of progress over such a long period of time, despite constant requests for many new features on this forum. From my point of view the software reached a relatively stable state around January and nothing much has changed since. There is absolutely no difference in the way I am using my S50 today compared with 6 months ago, no new feature to make my life easier and or better. To make things worse, it takes now almost twice as long to do a longer exposure compared with what I remember from 6 months ago and new software bugs seem to pop up from the woods, like the multicolor parallel satellite trails. I remember the goto function in SkyAtlas just working months ago, today it takes forever and I just cancel it and switch manually to stargazing mode, the S50 is already pointing right but it is unable to realize that.
I remember doing maybe ten firmware updates over the time I owned the S50, with absolutely no new features added and the usability going down, especially in the last couple of months. Yes, the S50 is a good product and it works, but it does not seem to go anywhere and my patience is wearing thin.