I've never used the side box version, but have always used Ask a Question primarily because I only use PayPal and encourage customers to check availability before ordering.

Host doesn't yet know what caused my site to disappear (I can still get in to admin). But not a big issue yet. I'll pop-up another 1.5 demo site soon probably with Fantastico or Quick Install. (My disappearing site was a manual install with full demo products.) May put Ask a Question at top of mod list along with Ultimate SEO URL, to see if all works nicely together.

sph