Hello Group.

I've been playing with Guide 8 for a week or two. I'm into chasing
asteroids, and for this purpose its pretty neat software. But I
have a couple of basic questions/problems.

1. This software apparently requires that I place CD #1 into my
drive everytime before it will boot. What a pain in the butt! I
thought that this kind of software protection went out with Win 95.
Am I missing something here????

2. Charts print out just fine, but it sure would be nice to have the
basic info (such as the name) of the object centered in the chart.
Is there a way to accomplish this?

3. Continuing along the lines of the above question, I've taken to
clicking on MORE INFO and printing out that page. But after
printing out a chart in Win XP, the MORE INFO page doesn't print
unless I hit print a second time. Or unless I print the next chart -
which will be proceeded by the MORE INFO page from the last chart
printed. And even if I hit print a second time, yet another page
will print immediately preceeding the next chart that I print.
There seems to be no end to the MORE INFO pages, or at least the end
isn't deliniated as the information just seems to roll over and
repeat. Is this a recognized program glitch?

4. Perhaps the major issue that I'm having is the accuracy, or lack
of accuracy that I'm getting on my charts. The Guide 8 manual
cautions that there are several reasons why asteroids may vary from
predicted location. And with the rarer less charted ones I can
understand that. But at this stage I'm primarially trying to
identify the brighter best known ones. And 20 to 30% of these are
several minutes out of location. I have repeatedly resorted to
marking the correct location of the asteroid viewed on my Guide 8
printout, and then verifying the sighting by viewing The Sky rev 5.
The Sky 5 is right on every time. It shows the asteroid to be where
I plotted it. Is there a higher accuracy calculation that I'm not
invoking? I can understand if both programs had the same error, but
The Sky is accurate and Guide 8 isn't. Am I missing something here?

Sorry to bother the group with what are novice questions. For the
past week I've repeatedly left phone messages on Guide's unanswered
telephone and still have had no response.

Pete Peterson