Off-line Files Nightmare!

Hi All

Wondered if you could help.

I've just added some old Ergo laptops (still WinXP Pro SP2) to our school
domain and the off-line setup has really affected the performance of these
laptops.

FYR, before I joined the laptops to the domain I copied the contents of
their My Docs to the user's home drive on the server, deleted the contents
of the My Docs on the laptops, joined them to the domain and then waited for
the log off process to sync the files on the laptops with the files on the
server.

I can appreciate that the first time you log off after joining the domain it
can take ages for the files to sync between the laptop and the server, but
this overly long process seems to be happening each time they log off, as if
it's going through the full sync process everytime.

I must confess at first I didn't remove the data from the old workgroup user
account's My Docs and then to my horror found that the sync could not
complete because the laptop HD was full, but I've cleared this data now and
there is 10GB free space.

The only thing that I have noticed is that the temporary off-line slider (in
Tools/Folder Options/Off-line files) is only allowing for 1.5GB of data
(some 3% of the drive) but even though I can change this slider and Apply
it, as soon as I go back into the Off-line window the slider goes back to
this 1.5GB setting - what's the point of the slider if you can't change it?

I'm really struggling with this off-line setup part and just feel like the
laptop is having to do a complete sync process every log off because it
can't do a complete all in one because the data on the server My Docs is
more than this off-line slider will allow. Am I close to the mark?

Thanks