Hi Joe, Your question about FocusMax and Vista brought to mind my first time using and installing FocusMax. There are three areas that can cause problems: 1. Not having ASCOM installed on your system. See http://ascom-standards.org/ for the latest version. 2. Not having either CCDSoft or MaxumDL installed and configured for your camera. 3. Not having either a RoboFocus or Optec TCF focuser installed on your telescope and the software installed and configured. Not having these will give an error. Larry Weber and Steve Brady have done a very nice job with this program. I have used it for about 5 years on both of my telescopes without any problem. The OS has been Windows 2000Pro and Windows XP Pro. I have not used FocusMax on a Vista machine but all of the above required software applications are Vista compatible so it should work. One problem that has plagued me when I need a serial port on my Vista Laptop is the USB to Serial adapter. Half of the ones I have tried are flakey. My best luck has been with one made by Cables Unlimited. "Your experience may vary" For those not familiar with FocusMax; Larry & Steve use an algorithm that all of us that have used with our eyes to focus a telescope, that is move the focuser in and out and observe the size of a star's image. When it is smallest the telescope is in focus. The major stumbling block for automating this procedure is how to measure the size of the out-of-focus star, particularly when it is so far out of focus that the secondary forms a shadow. Their method handles this very well. For a complete discussion of their method go to http://users.bsdwebsolutions.com/~larryweber/ITSPaper.htm One night when trying to deduce the focus drift with temperature on my 24", I ran FocusMax every five minutes and recorded the focus position and the temperature for the complete night. It was very revealing, not only for the drift but what time of night the focus position was the farthest from the start of the night (04:00 on a summer night). Jerry Foote ScopeCraft, Inc. 4175 E. Red Cliffs Dr. Kanab, UT 84741 435-899-1255 jfoote@scopecraft.com