Relax, have a cookie!

On last project we are working on, we decided to go heavy with browser cookie usage for saving user personalization settings locally instead of centralized (to database). Yes I know it slows down the page rendering, but please humor me in this exercise. Answer following questions truthfully:

1. How often do you delete your browser cookies?
2. Do you delete them at all (on purpose or automatically by an antivirus)?
3. Are you afraid of browser cookies?
4. Would you even consider using website which saves user personalization settings locally to your computer (and available only from that computer) vs. site that requires registration and login and then saves user personalization settings centralized?

The initial fear of cookies (or at least a “hype”) should have disappear over the past years, and people should have realized that much greater harm can happen to them via internet browser than a mere 4kb of random data stored in cookie.

So, the only real question here is – are cookies convenient enough method of saving personalized settings in modern web age? Are people so used to “click here to register” signs (let’s not forget fighting with captcha, leaving personal data, waiting for an email and activating account via email links hassle…) even only real benefit is ability to save personalized settings of that website???