Telescope Reviews: The Orion 90mm achro OTA on sale again...

I finally got some clear skies tonight, so I had a chance to see what this scope can do - and to be honest, I really didn't expect a whole lot from it.
The seeing was nice and steady for a change, so I spent over an hour on Jupiter. I started with a 30mm Tak and kept working my way up in magnification as the scope cooled. The best view was with an 8mm TV Plossl (114x), so I stayed with it for about 30 minutes. I could easily pick out irregularities in the NEB, but couldn't quite resolve them into festoons. The southern belt wasn't quite as dark, but I could still seem some irregularity in it. There was a thin belt just visible above the NEB, and some shading near the south pole also. Overall the view was sharp and well defined with the 8mm.
I put the 3-6mm TV zoom in and could get a decent image at 6 and 5mm (152x and 182x), but that was the limit. I could glimpse some detail at 4mm (228x) and at 3mm (303x) the belts were just about gone - but all four moons were still reasonably sharp! The focuser is decent, and the scope snaps right into focus, but if I had been working with a two-speed focuser, I probably could have coaxed some detail out of Jupiter at the 3mm setting.
I turned the scope to Epsilon Lyrae with the 8mm in it and was surprised to see both components cleanly split with dark sky between them. I switched to the 10mm Sirius Plossl (91x) that came with the scope and still had a clean split, so I moved up to a 15mm TV Plossl (61x) and could barely get some separation, but when the seeing was steady, they were cleanly split.
I took a quick look at Vega and for the first time I noticed a bit of CA, but it certainly wasn't a rainbow of colors. There was some green and yellow in and out of focus, but the rings were nice and concentric.
I swung over to Albireo to see what the colors would look like - very blue and very gold with both the 8 and 10mm Plossls. Polaris is always worth a look, and is a good test for a small scope because of the contrast in magnitudes between the two stars. I had no problem at all picking up the faint companion even with a 20mm Plossl.
I found I really didn't need any kind of red dot finder on this scope. I just sighted along the tube and then used the 6 x 26 correct image finder to center the object.
Regardless of whether the price is $104.00 or $129.00, this is a heck of a scope. I think Preston made the comment that this would make a good Christmas scope for someone. It's many levels above the worthless dime store scopes that are usually sold at this time of the year, and it really is possible to do some decent work with it.
Now, if I could convince myself it's worth adding a $150 GSO two-speed focuser to a hundred dollar scope ................

John