Chuck, You're welcome to borrow my Atlas Orion mount for nine days covering two weekends at your convenience. Rod Mollise's review may be helpful for comments. http://uncle-rods.blogspot.com/2009/01/gemmania.html Both of the mounts are at the same price point and are made in the same factory by Synta - which is owned by Celestron (which also owns Orion).  One would expect that Celestron would put better components in its name branded EQ6 mount as opposed to the purchased legacy brand.   Also, the CGEM series came out after Synta had been getting the bugs out of the Atlas mount for several years.  One would expect that as the latest release, the CGEM would incorporate the newest technology, e.g. the ability to polar align on southern local horizon bright stars. I do not own and have not used a CGEM EQ6.  Rod Mollise's review of the CGEM and my experience with the Atlas were the same with respect to mounting bars.  Plan to purchase an x-heavy duty mounting bar for anything over 25 lbs.  Scopes under 25 lbs still benefit from an x-duty bar.  I first purchased an off the shelf heavy duty bar for $50 and then went back ended up buying an x-heavy duty specialty bar for around $100.   This is a "must buy" for any scopes weighing over 30lbs. The physical handcontrollers for Orion and Celestron are identical and for most Meades are nearly identical.  It is the software that is different.  For planet finding, the Skyscan software remains a joke at software version 3.24.  Even with code corrected gratis by an physicist online acquaintance of mine, it still is not accurate.  It gets you within a degree of the planet.   For DSO finding, the Atlas mounts are not allsky slew with accurating targeting.  When slewing more than 30 degrees, the basic routine is to resync on a nearby bright star and then go to the target.  If you are working an individual constellation and can bracket the target area by resynching on bright alignment stars in a box or triangle around the target,  the controller becomes highly accurate within the confines of the bracketed zone.  On each local region resync, the software progressively creates a more accurate model of the local deviation in the mount's error and the idealized celestial sphere. (These comments are for Skyscan v3.24;  the current version is 3.27.)  The software version 3.27 update readme file indicates that corrections were made to the IC and NGC catalogues that increase targeting accuracy.  I have not installed and testing Skyscan v3.27. Guiding for imaging on the Atlas requires the supplemental purchase - the Shoestring Gosub USB->ST4 adapter for $100.  I do not know about the CGEM.  If you want to look at a used one,  I would feel comfortable buying any used Atlas off Astromart manufactured after let's say 2008.  Make sure it has the current handcontroller and not a version 1 handcontroller.   The intial handcontrollers used during 2005-2007 were not software updatable.    - Kurt