Offline Files Not Reliable - Randomly misses files

I have been using Offline Files for years, probably since Windows 2000 first
came out. I like them and they seem to work well for small batches of files.

I have several GB available offline on my laptop, with about 2/3 from one
network (an XP pro computer at my home) and 1/3 from another (domain network
at work). I noticed that it was not adding new subfolders created on the
host computer into a "Make available offline" folder sync'd to my laptop.
With some changes in the Group Policy Editor, I set it to always sync entire
folder contents of any folder. That seemed to help it catch created
subfolders.

However, now, it seems to randomly (I can't find the pattern) sync some of
files and folders and othertimes get them all. No error when it doesn't sync
everything, and at first glance it appears to have worked (because many
files are correctly sync'd). But some new files created on the Host may or
may not have been replicated. The problems seems to be folder-based. It's
not always the same folders, but when it fails, it seems all the files in a
given folder failed.

Does anyone have a solution? Can anyone help me understand how Offline Files
work and why this might happen?

Does anyone know if this feature will work any better in the upcoming
Windows Vista?

Thanks,
Colin