How to win auctions on eBay - Auction Strategies Overview

There are several schools of thought on the subject of winning auctions on eBay. My personal favorite is the 'Set it and forget it' method. (What was that infomercial for? a rotisserie oven?)
Once I've found what it is that I want to purchase, I go in and place my highest bid, click out and move on. I don't win every auction, but I also don't miss opportunities or over spend. The trick to using this method is to know your absolute highest amount you are willing to spend. Because if you put in one number but are willing to pay another, you have defeated the purpose. eBay does what is called a proxy bidding for you. They only put up the LOWEST number needed in order to win the auction. If you bid $50 on an item with an opening bid of $2, if no one else bids, you could win for $2! This technique also prevents you from getting into a bidding war and ending up spending too much because you let the emotions of the hunt get the best of your better judgement. If you do things this way, eBay's program will do the bidding war for you. And, because computer programs have no emotions, the will actually stop when the money gets too high. You may be sad that you lost the auction, but you won't have buyers remorse or have to justify to your spouse why you spent two-hundred bucks on a used pair of khakis.
Another option is to use sniping software that inputs your bid for you at the last minute. I guess this could be beneficial if you are bidding on really high demand products, but the drawback is that if your software doesn't work properly, you've missed an opportunity. And, the only way to test it, is to try it, and you won't know until you have lost an auction, that it wasn't set up right.
I have a friend that manually snipes auctions. He literally sits in front of the screen and waits until the last second and places his bid. This would never work for me because I am a scatter-brain and would totally forget to come back and place my bid. By the time I would remember, someone else would have won the auction. Plus, this method has the drawback of the possibility of getting emotionally caught up.
In writing this post, I tried to come up with a list of don'ts but could only think of one. My advice would be, do not place a bid for the opening amount. Ever. Especially not in the first few days of the auction. It is unbelievable to me how many people win my auctions for only one cent more than the first bidder. Just doesn't make sense. I'm sure that many of them log back into eBay to find out that they were outbid in the last few seconds and had they just bid five cents more, they would have won.
Or, you can use the eBay Countdown tool. I've never used it myself because I haven't yet taken the time to download it and learn it, but when I do, I'll let you know how it goes.
What is your strategy?