Excellent article and I see many of my own frustrations in self booking.

Glad to see Easy Sabre mentioned as well though it has a Y2K problem and will disappear at the end of the year. On the compuserve travel forum (which has lost quite a few members to this board) we are bemoaning the death of a really useful and fast tool for looking and booking, the text version that is. The web based version of Easy Sabre will not be missed. The text based version available on Compuserve and I don't know where else is great.

Jim