NDBEER: here is one answer you don't know.
you could have just copied the password from your e-mail and pasted it in the password box. Much more simple then having to think about pressing the shift button every few letters :-)

On the other case Registration was not added for convenience, but
1) there were a few people faking to be others (posting under someone else's handle nasty messages)
2) some people were not following the rules and were just coming here to advertise their site, their prieces and their specials. And they were disrupting the forums
3) to give the ability to people to edit their post (even though I am sure this was probably more of a consequence then a cause)
......