A couple of years ago, I experimented with Offline Files in Windows XP and found it to be pretty much unusable. Is Windows Vista any better?
Offline Files now works at the bit level, so there's no attempting to force replication on Access databases or any other funny business related to file types. Also, document folders (and music, pictures, desktop, etc) can be mapped directly to network shares, and I've seen Microsoft blogs evangelising this approach. Windows in the shape of Vista now supports symbolic links, including symbolic links which point to network paths, making it possible to maintain an existing folder structure but with the data actually residing on a server. Finally, it's possible to move the location of the offline files cache without having to download a Resource Kit.
The reality for me, however, has been yet another Microsoft-induced exercise in hair-pulling. The annoyances include:
Loss of icons, and a duplicate Contacts folder. Now, let me ask you, how difficult can it be to have the Operating System remember where each document folder lives, and automatically display the correct icon? Pretty easy I would have thought, but evidently it's too difficult for the folks at Redmond.
Strictly speaking, this isn't an offline files issue, but it will be most often experienced by people trying to achieve the same as me. I've attempted to fix it by mounting my network shares as drives, and also by using symbolic links to the network shares, but in both of these cases I lose some important functionality... Now, I've not seen this documented anywhere, but if the C:\Users folders are changed to point directly to network shares by way of the Location tab, not only is offline files automatically turned on, but those folders retain the Recycle Bin capability! (more of this in a moment). If mapped network drives or symbolic links are used, or indeed if the share is directly accessed via Network in Explorer, deleted files just get zapped. Not good; having my files on a network server is all about safeguarding my data, not making it more vulnerable.
Start menu folder name including network share name. I managed to avoid this problem initially, having seen it mentioned elsewhere, but now my Music folder is doing it too. Instead of displaying "Sounds" or "Music" it displays "Sounds (\\avalon)". Probably related to the strange appearance of the folder in Explorer in the top picture.
Strange stray folders. According to the Linux box, the folder PS0... doesn't exist. Vista has presumably got confused and it actually contains duplicate entries belonging to the Programming folder. Running Sync doesn't zap the zombie folder (so far).
Unhelpful error messages. The message shown here isn't the worst (you can't find the folder called "P", Vista, because I renamed it "Programming" in Vista, some minutes ago!); those have been messages like "Failed to sync file x" without any explanation to why. "File x" seems mostly to be .doc files for some reason.
The biggest problem by far has been that it's just so damn slow. I've been throwing data around my gigabit network for several days on end now and I still haven't got all my files where I want them and synced up properly. However, I think this is mostly a seperate issue related to RAID or hardware, so I'll cover it in a seperate article.
home.kingboyk.com
http://home.kingboyk.com/article.php/offline-files-in-vista