I do not use the Astromart forums or their emails, but have no problem accessing the classifieds and pricing information - once a free basic login id is created. You also have to have a modern browser version (IE 6.0 or above) and have your browser's "cookie" option enabled. The cookies are used by the browser and website to pair your session id with the information that you request from the server (and also for marketing web-tracking purposes). Otherwise the site, like many other commerical sites, won't work properly. I have not bought anything from Astromart (www.astromart.com) for a couple of years, because mostly because I am cheap and have lost out on bidding. (I'm still hoping for that $300 used spectrograph). I generally use Astromart to cross check the going "market price" for used astro goods, so I do not over pay on an Ebay bid. Hope that helps. - Kurt P.S. - More on notes commercial web tracking and browsers at astro sites. Like with all login ids required at commercial sites (Orion, telescopes.com, Meade, OPT, Surplus Shed), you do have to read the account creation menus very carefully, making sure that you are checking the option (or sometimes multiple options) to assure that you do not receive their electronic junk mail. The "do not subscribe to newsletter" buttons are often in microtype and are hidden below the browser's digital fold. The only amateur science commercial website that continues to send me their nuisance junk email, even after hitting the unsubscribe button several times, is Edmund Scientifics Online. Leaving your browser cookies turned on has become a necessity to use most commercial sites. But the down side is that most commercial sites now scan your browser cookies and browser history in order to create a marketing profile on you - which is in turn is used to send you more junk email. What I do to keep those nosey internet hypermarketeers out of my personal business is to use the "delete all personal info" option in IE 7.0 every two or three days. In IE 7.0, there is a new "delete" all personal information option (delete cookies, browsing history, temporary history, saved passwords) under Tools | Internet Options | Delete | Delete All. Under IE 5.0 and 6.0 you had to "delete cookies", "delete browsing history" and "delete all temporary files" separately to clean out the browser. Keeping the browser history and cookies cleaned out reduces subsequent junk or site emails, because there is only a small amount of info in your browser to grab.

From an info consumer perspective, a bad model is that used by the Tribune and (sorry JB) the DN. Visit those sites you get scanned and get hit with a pop up - or in case of the Trib, multiple popups. A better model from a consumer perspective is probably Amazon, which keeps track of what you buy or voluntarily add to a registry "wish list" and tailors their marketing to you from there.

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