what monitor said

I just finished uninstalling it. I found it pretty useless, and the auto-run was annoying!

Sidestep is a fairly decent tool for getting a quick view of hotel availability for an area. Usually, I just want to see a list of all of the HHonors or Marriott hotels that have rooms available for my dates BEFORE I go run a bunch of searches all over the web. Sidestep gives me this with one click.

Most of the time, I end up finding a better rate elsewhere. But if I don't, I click-through Sidestep to the hotel site and book the stay.

This seems to work the best when you are looking for a 2- or 3-star place with a fairly basic rate structure (i.e., a Hampton Inn). Sidestep is less effective at searching high-end hotels, and totally useless if you are looking for something that isn't part of a big chain.

For flights and rental cars, I find it to be totally useless. The searches take too long, and always produce less complete results than the other sites.

I hated the autolaunch and uninstalled it immediately. It was too intrusive for me.

Not only are the fares never cheaper than can be found on www.travelbyus.com or www.orbitz.com, but (like Travelocity) it gives priority to certain airlines. For example, United will only ever show up if no other airline flies that route, even if United fares are cheaper.

I find the autolaunch to be intrusive. However, I have been able to find decent car rentals on it.

Autolaunch was also the cause behind its very short life on my computer. The interference with other web sites was intolerable.

Thanks for this link. I haven't seen this one before.

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Biggest Little 1K (in The Biggest Little City) In The World