Hey Tony,
SGP has been serving me for about 3 years now and I have found it to be the most useful of those few apps I have tried. The plate-solving feature is super nice, where you can pretty much go exactly back to the same exact coordinates from any old subframe from a previous session to within several pixels. Not too keen on their new subscription plan as I supposedly purchased a lifetime license the first time around. We'll see how long I can go without updates or what happens when a Windows machine needs to be replaced. SGP has some glitches, like it won't run the TEC cooling on my Atik camera anymore. Also I get some bad slews when the mount changes targets or does a meridian flip with clouds overhead. It thinks it's someplace else and goes awry. But 95% of the time it works great.
Several weeks ago I tried the freebie NINA, which has a lot of the same features. But I found you can't change anything, like add extra frames or a new target, while the software is running. You have to come to a complete stop to do that. Also you cannot abort the sequence in the middle of a frame if something is not right, you have to wait until the exposure runs out, a pain during 5 minute or longer exposures. Also It keeps running if guiding goes bad (clouds, etc.) , if you bump the mount, etc. SGP will warn you and stop the run, or restart when things are better. NINA doesn't do that and just keeps generating bad frames.
Plate-solving is a must for me since my runs often occur over numerous evenings to gather enough data. You may want to keep that on your checklist.?
Hope this helps.
John
