The Office 2010 Synchronization Center

Well, for Office 2010, Microsoft has essentially brought that concept to uploading as well. They have created a new applet called the "Office Synchronization Center". When you tell Word (for example) to save a file, rather than sending it directly to the SharePoint site, it hands it off to the Synchronization Center, which does the uploading, including such niceties as retrying if for some reason the upload fails the first time. It also allows you to continue working once you have started the save process – sort of like a "background save" on steroids.

The Office 2010 Synchronization Center End User SharePoint