At 00.14 01/06/2004, you wrote:
the standard ms implementation depends on copying all user data to the client machine on logon, and copying it all back on logoff.
or you could just disable roaming profiles and tell your users to eat it, and always save documents on the server. In my school it's been like this for at least four years and since the last month (domain upgrade to Active Directory on Windows Server 2003)
and allows "false logons" where the impression is given that a user has logged on, (cached logons) when they haven't,
by the way, this allows you to disconnect your laptop from the network and continue using it. Your "false impression" is someone else's "cool feature" (not-so-great security, but it's the kind of cake you can't both have and eat)
this default behaviour is almost impossible to prevent, (trust me, i have tried)
you haven't tried hard enough. Read a bit about the folder redirection policy in the Windows 2000 Server documentation (free download from Microsoft) and on Technet. Some parts are still copied back and forth (the per-user registry hive files, because they are accessed a lot like paging files, and they can't be accessed reliably enough over the network), some others (like the internet cache) will not roam at all to avoid bandwidth waste and some programs may not be able to access bare UNC paths (as folder redirection doesn't mount the remote directories under drive letters) but it works well enough for most practical purposes. You could even do it manually, but it doesn't work as good
does anyone else have any opinions on this?
yes. Never assume, verify first. Windows upgrades do bring improvements