I know its a bit  late now to say that I did know that but I forgot because I have been doing a C++ shell utility for the last 3 months - but its true.
That was the knowledge I had in my mind when I was doing my cart - ages ago - I discovered ViewState properly after that. But ViewState may be client side but from what I can remember it appears, from practical point of view, to act like a page  specific session var (excluding the cache).
Well thats how I used to think of it and it seemed to work.

I'm gonna take another look at that first stuff (and some recent stuff) I was doing, I have a feeling it may solve some of my Page_Load, Page_PreRender dilemmas. i'm afraid I have been avoiding ViewState in the latest stuff I've been up to - and doing it all in Page_Load, and Pre_Render (uneccessarily I suspect - though probably a bit cleaner - keeping ViewState clear and relying purely on server  code for it's functionality has got to be a sound idea - do you reckon ????)

Here's a question .... how is it that with asp.NET when you do a postback the page seems to hold on and then deliever it all in one go.
I like it, it's cool - but why is that ? I'd have thought it would be something to do flush etc, but I don't know, is it ?