Telescopes! Meade DS-80 vs Celestron 127EQ...noob scope review

I just recently acquired two very simple and very cheap telescopes with the idea of taking them into the hills since silicon valley is oh so polluted these days. Anyone in Nor-Cal knows what I mean. I picked up a Meade DS-80 $85 (craigslist) and a Celestron 127EQ $118 (OpticsPlanet.com) and they are very different scopes. The Meade is an 80mm achromatic refractor on an Alt. Az mount and came with a bunch of noob eyepieces + barlows that are adequate. Celestron pumped out a 127mm newtonian reflector on an GEM mount again with some adequate eyepieces and a 3x barlow. Skies around here have been anything but clear but I've had some shots to use them farther up north recently and both seem to be capable scopes.

The Meade does a pretty good job with 12mm and 25mm eyepieces...even a 3x barlow on the 12mm is tollerable, even though the mount doesn't lock well. The mount is far too unstable for the 4mm and frankly the arpeture of the scope isnt physically enough to provide enough light for the eye piece.

Celestron gave me a set of 20mm and 4mm eyepieces which work pretty well. The extra arpeture helps out alot with the 4mm eyepiece over the 80mm scope. As with all reflectors they occasionally require collmination and thankfully it looks like this was pre-collminated pretty well as I can see jupiter with good clarity. My only gripe is the barlow seems to be a waste and has been annoying to use...could be me though. The GEM is good enough for the money but I find its slow motion RA to be annoying to use.

Overall these seem to be very capable scopes for the money and I certainly intend to watch some intresting things with them. My favorite is far has been the DS-80 as I find it more managable, but I suspect my opnion will shift to the Celestron once the smoke clears out of the valley. I have found out two very important things...what you mount your scope on is just as important as the scope itself and eyepieces are highly important, just make sure you have enough arpeture to realistically support them.