Re: S & T uses low end paper

Doink wrote:
> I struggle with renewing S&T every year. The reviews are silly---ever
> seen a bad review? You can read everything of value in the mag in about
> an hour...it's a bit over priced too. But, the alternatives aren't any
> better....

I've seen a bad review (by which I assume you mean a review that pans
the product) of software and books. Not as much on mounts, and hardly
ever on telescopes. It is natural and human to want to emphasize the
good points of a product, and even to justify some of the bad ones by
pointing out, well, the product doesn't cost that much, once you make
a few tweaks it works very well, etc. I doubt that Sky and Telescope
have much of a role in that, if any; reviewers are perfectly capable
of doing that on their own.

That it's natural and human doesn't mean that it's good, of course. I
would like to see more comparative reviews, but those are harder to
research and write, I suspect.

I spend rather more than an hour to read everything I find of value in
Sky and Telescope. But I'm pretty broad in my interests. If there's
anything I don't read as much of, it's telescope reviews, anyway. I'm
more interested in finding out what to do with the telescope I already
own than I am in deciding what telescope I'm not going to replace it
with. :)

That said, a good telescope review usually teaches me something about
telescopes I didn't know before.

--
Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx>
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt
.

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