which planetarium do people prefer?

Good old planspheres, dew proof, drop proof and can stand the rigors of been left out over night by accident, unlike my laptop. :lol:

Painful, Sounds like the voice of experience.

However since most of my time is spent with UNIX and not Windows, there is only one program worth mentioning : XEphem. www.xephem.com Its free, though the printed manual and CD's cost. Bandwidth will be needed to download the star catalogues from various places if you dont buy the CD's.

The next version, 3.6 is expected to be released on Decemer 1st. (This year!)

Cheers,
~Al