John, as Gary has said, you done well with 5 minute unguided shots there, is it really hard to polar align the cge? Reason I'm asking is that i'm considering getting a cge in the near future.
The CGE is pretty simple to align to a reasonable degree using the inbuilt routine (2 or 3 star alignment) and then manually move the mount to polaris. The only headache is if you don't have it reasonably well pointed north to start with you may have to physically move the entire mount to align. There is only a small adjustment in azimuth possible on the mount using an allen key. If you have a permanent or semi-permanent setup then you are laughing. The tracking error is quite good. Here is a five minute exposure at prime focus on a C11 with a F6.3 reducer unguided.
John,
Regarding your batteries for your 450D. When I was using the 350D, I had a 240v power supply, which connected into the battery compartment.
I got it on the net, sorry I cant remember the site, but if you do a search you should find it.
The 450 batteries are not bad. From a full charge I took 170 minutes of exposures using the timer on the LCD display and still had 2/3 of a charge left on the indicator. With 2 fully charged batteries I would say 6-7 hours is possible which is plenty (new batteries mind you)
The Lord giveth, the Revenue taketh away. (John 1:16)
  