Sorry for the high cost for the spider hack;-) It is basically to cover installation support, etc. I would give Charles' mod a try if it ends up working well. I'm really not trying to make much money off this, only trying to make it worth my time while I balance with grad school.
The cookie issue is on the backburner at this point (I've been aware of it for a few months now, but haven't had the time to research it). One workaround is to continue feeding your users the CGI/PHP dynamic URLs while feeding Google the spider hack (a legitimate form of cloaking in my opinion).
In any case, I just wanted to stop in and mention that if you are familiar with mods (most ubbdev members are) then give Charles' method a shot. Free is better than $50!!!