Does it finally log the person in automatically when they register? Many many other software vendors do this.. It just makes sense the user would be logged in when they first register.

Indeed it confuses people when they sign up that they are not already logged in.

I just tested, and if you have email validation turned off you are automatically logged in.

If you have validation turned on, you are shown a "step 3" on the registration screen that gives you further instructions. I don't think it's worth logging the validating member in right away, personally, since they'll have almost no permissions until they validate their account. That could potentially create confusion for the user since they'll start trying to do stuff and won't be able to, where-as giving them a message "ok now go do this" explains what to do. For what it's worth, sites that require email validation do usually try to get you to do that before you can login in my experience.

Actually I've seen a lot of sites log you in even with email validation turned on (which is 99.9% of the sites). What they typically do in most cases is provide a prominent banner that explains that you need to be validated and gives you a link to resend your validation email. If you don't log them in and do this and they navigate away from that page it will be difficult for them to resend the validation email, or change their email address if they didn't enter it correctly.

I think it makes the most sense to log them in regardless and provide necessary information to validate.

Actually I've seen a lot of sites log you in even with email validation turned on (which is 99.9% of the sites). What they typically do in most cases is provide a prominent banner that explains that you need to be validated and gives you a link to resend your validation email. If you don't log them in and do this and they navigate away from that page it will be difficult for them to resend the validation email, or change their email address if they didn't enter it correctly.

I think it makes the most sense to log them in regardless and provide necessary information to validate.

I've seen this as well. Except, if you add this then you'll also have to add something in the case of someone doing admin validation as well.