Working with Source Safe over the web

I am working (from Israel) for a company from the US (I haven't finished my thesis yet, but my grant is dry and I still need to feed my family...). Since I'm working on applications related to trading, there is a great emphasis on security so every file transfer is done over a VPN.
Lately I needed to work directly with their VSS database. I agree with most that Source Safe is really something that should be left in the past, but it will take some time before I can convince them to switch and in the mean time work must continue. Everybody who has tried to use VSS over an Internet connection knows it's just impossible to work this way. Add to that the cross-Atlantic delay and a VPN link and you get to wait 10-20 minutes only to open a tree in the viewer (that is, if you're lucky enough not to get link errors, which I'm currently investigating with my ISP). So I've been looking for applications that help accessing an existing VSS database over the Internet.
The major tools I found were as follows:

SourceAnyWhere (SAW) - http://www.dynamsoft.com/products/SAW_Overview.aspx

SourceOffSite (SOS) - http://www.sourcegear.com/sos/index.html

SourceXT - http://www.acorden.com/sourcext/features.htm

VSS Remoting - http://www.sourceremoting.com/index.htm

VSS Connect - http://www.vssconnect.com/VssConnect.htm

The prices vary around 150$-250$ per user, except for VssConnect which costs only 30$.

They all work with some kind of web server and have a way to encrypt the data, but in our case it's irrelevant since we are working over a VPN link anyway.

SAW and VSSRemoting have a special feature that supposedly improves file transfer significantly, by transfering only the parts of the files that are different.

We didn't want to waste too much time reviewing each, so we decided to start by checking out the one that looks the most mature (SAW).

In general, I am very happy using it. It works really fast, integrates with Visual Studio 2005 and does the work well. I did encounter a few issues, though:

1. Switching with the same solution between SAW and VSS didn't work well for me. I contacted DynamSoft's support and they tried to help me, but it didn't work. In my case I don't care much, because 99% of the time I'll be using SAW anyway. If you plan on switching between them often - I suggest you check it out thoroughly.

2. File comparison application dissapointing:

a. Compares lines and not words/characters (like VSS)

b. No option to ommit blanks, so even if the difference is just an irrelevant space, you will see the whole line marked as different (like VSS)

c. The GUI doesn't work properly - when there is only one difference, the arrows to jump to the difference are disabled when there is only one.

(NOTE: According to Support, this issue should be fixed soon - in the next release).

3. Sometimes, when I just do something on the solution with no need to interact with VSS, it starts performing all kinds of synchronization operations with the server. During that time I can't do anything with the solution. Since SAW works really fast with the server, it's not the end of the world, and usually this process is over in 10-20 seconds. It also doesn't happen a lot, but still - it's annoying and shouldn't happen at all.

(NOTE: According to Support this is initiated by the IDE and not by the SAW integration client directly)

4. When trying to perform something with too many files (~15+) I get socket errors. The link to the server isn't broken, but the specific operation is aborted. This is a very painful issue, since it requires a lot of manual workarounds. I'm still investigating this issue with both DynamSoft and my ISP - I have reasons to believe it may be caused by problems in my Internet connection. I would still have hoped SAW would be able to cope with minor connection problems, though...

Despite these, we are probably going to purchase it - especially if I manage to fix the socket errors problem by fixing the Internet connection.

As a last note, Support told me that in the next month they are about to release their next version (5). I asked whether, if we purchase SAW before the release, we would be entitled to an automatic upgrade when the next version will actually be released (like JetBrains did when we purchased Resharper 1.5, little before the release of 2.0). I was dissapointed by their answer: they haven't decided yet about the upgrade policy. Therefore, even if I manage to fix the socket errors problem, we will still have to wait for the release of the next version before purchasing (or for them to tell me we will get the next version for free anyway).