Thinking of buying a telescope?

For several years, I had been thinking of buying a telescope to get a closer view of planets, their moons, etc. However, it is still listed in one of my to-do lists. During any of the shopping sessions when my wife digs deeper into the products that interest her, I get to do some window shopping of products in the nearby stores. Some times I get to see telescopes priced very low. I stop my self from buying them because "I did not do a good research about telescopes, and what if this brand is not good".

Today, I wanted some break from what I was doing and I searched for telescopes in Bangalore. Interestingly, one of the articles pointed me to http://www.astrocentral.co.uk/telescope.html. This website says "The most important thing about magnification is not to get too hung up about it.", "At night in towns, as everything cools down (especially after a hot day) heat rises and causes turbulence in the air. When looking through a telescope at high magnification this causes the image to swim in and out of focus." This has given me a good introduction to what I should do when I go out for shopping for my first telescope. To begin with - I should set aside atleast Rs 20k to get a good first telescope. Then I should find a good lawn accessible in the night. Finally, the place should be dark (away from the city lights). All this means that I should move to a village after purchasing the telescope :)