TEB - you are asking ALL of the questions I have about the GigaPan. I have read everything online I can get my hands on, the user manual, the marketing stuff, watched the YouTube vids, can't find a friggin' phone number to call them. That means any support is via online only.
On their website I read you must upload all of your files to do the stitching at GigaPan, then I read elsewhere on their website the stitching s/w is now sent with the robot. Which is it?!?
As Brad mentioned, the next generation GP is due out anytime now, will support a dSLR (or smaller), but will NOT support the weight of a long lens on the camera.
I suggest you read the entire manual online, and watch all of the various YouTube videos, i.e. how to change batteries, etc. I got a sense the robot is much more cheaply made than I previously thought. When I looked at it closer in the videos it impressed as being at the level of a high school science project, not something ready for primetime.
Brad - do you stitch the images on YOUR computer? Is the finished image JPEG or some proprietary format? At any point in creating a GigaPan image do you have to rely on GigaPan's website or is it something you do entirely with your computer?