If at first you don't succeed...
Give up? Never!
Patience is sometimes more than it's own reward - I have found a replacement for the dire Briefcase that is part of Vista... and it's free MS software now compatible with Vista too.
See here: microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx
I've downloaded it, installed it, (It installs by default, which I left untouched, to AppData - huh?) and run it...
Nice...
The only drawback from my cursory inspection is that, unlike briefcase one cannot sync files from multiple locations in one go - it's a folder-folder sync utility, but apart from that it promises to meet my needs!
Hope it's good for you too...