Oh, well, that is really my concern. If it is supposed to work now
with XP SP1 then I'm good!
However, I'm still curious why/how XP is ignoring the "allow caching"
on the physical folder, which it is apparently doing.
Ok, one more thing - mainly for Chris I guess - on these XP clients I
get lots of sync errors, every time. I found a KB article that as I
remember said it's a matter of file types being excluded - as I
remember XP is more aggressive by default trying to sync things like
.mdb files that shouldn't be used offline. You probably know there
are GPO settings for that too.
This is always a problem - especially if you set up the offline replication
to occur during shutdown (as I do on my laptops) and then find the dialog
waiting for you to remind you about an invalid file type or an open file
that couldn't be synched. I suppose this is better than silently failing
and letting one wander off, blissfully unaware that a copy of a vital file
was absent!
It's easy to understand these restrictions - they all make absolute sense -
but it's not so easy to explain all the exceptions (or to remember them
all!) when designing this kind of thing for others. In a similar vein, EFS
files not being copied across FRS replicas is another one to watch out for.
The biggest headache is trying to design a laptop build that uses no local
data storage (other than the CSC) in an environment where there's a
cultural reliance on Outlook PST files. Having an Outlook 2003 OST cached
locally is OK (it's a backup copy of data already on the server - best
thought of as the Exchange equivalent of the CSC really) but PST's may
contain valuable information that isn't otherwise replicated elsewhere.
Maybe WinFS (with appropriate applications' support I guess) will help fix
some of these things and tidy up some of the inconsistencies at the same
time - I haven't gotten around to looking at the latest builds yet...
One of the things on my "(e-mail address removed)" list is to enable me to save a
file from an e-mail attachment, at the same time removing it from the OST -
leaving just a pointer to the saved file (after all, I don't need two
copies). Perhaps WinFS will make all stores the same thing and this won't
be an issue anyway?
Anyway, musing mode off! Thanks for the tip. I'll let you know how I get
on...
Regards,
Chris