Ijaz, the reason you have not faced the problem on other sites is probably due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. The sites are using "sessions" rather than cookies to log you into the site. These sites can usually be identified by looking at the URL in the "Address" line of the browser: If it's a big, huge, long, ugly URL with numbers and letters then they are using session IDs rather than cookies. The advantage to this approach is that it works pretty much on every browser. The disadvantage, and the reason I don't use it, is because I don't like those long URLs.

2. The site has been specially coded to automatically detect what browser you are using and deals with cookies especially for that browser. In this case, the site sees you are using IE and takes into account the bugs in IE cookie handling. I can do this, too, and is what I'll eventually have to do--but I've avoided doing it because each version of IE has a different set of cookie bugs--I can't just say "If it's IE, do this." I need to say, "If it's IE4, do this. If it's IE5, do this, etc." It's a maintenance hassle to work around the IE bugs.

So, yes, you can say it's an 8052.com problem. But, actually, it's more accurately an IE problem that many other sites have taken into account whereas 8052.com just assumes cookies work--which is unfortunately not a valid assumption with IE.

Regardless of whether I am able to handle the IE bugs soon, I'd recommend at least trying Opera. It is very fast and has neat features, such as allowing you to block "pop-up windows" to avoid the annoying in-your-face advertising used by sites like Yahoo.com.

FYI, the reason I haven't replied to your email--or anyone else's mail--is because I was on vacation for the last week. I just got back yesterday and am in the process of reviewing and replying to the 195 messages I received during that time...

Regards,
Craig Steiner