I happen to be a software and web developer, so I've heard this request plenty of times myself. Auto-saving drafts, or at least manually saved drafts!
I just spent about an hour writing what IMHO was a really good contribution to the General Credit forum. I *knew* I would be logged out after that period of time, and I had already reminded myself several times throughout writing the post to log back in before I clicked "Preview Post" or "Submit Post". Unfortunately, when it came time to hit "Preview" my mind was elsewhere, and the Stop button didn't work in time!
It's more than irritating, but what bugs me the most is that now I'm not motivated to re-type what would've hopefully been a very helpful contribution! So you're not just looking at irritating the occasional user, but losing out on helpful contributions!
AFAIK only the Opera browser saves field entries, so all of the IE6, IE7, and Firefox users (so almost everyone!) can be thwarted by the lack of this feature.
