It pains me to admit this, but Windows does a MUCH better job of handling disconnected network resources than OS X.

I'm not sure OS X/Finder even bothers to time-out. .Mac syncing is terrible on unreliable networks, as well and can easily crash/make unresponsive the Finder... hell, it's pretty terrible on reliable connections.

(Attention .Mac developers: I only have a single user account, so I only have a single Keychain. OF COURSE syncing will change more than 5% of my Keychains! STOP ANNOYING ME WITH THAT USELESS LITTLE BIT OF INFORMATION! CHRIST I DON'T CARE, JUST SYNC IT!)

Ahem.

When I'm commuting on the train, the unreliable network connection wreaks havoc with Finder. God forbid I choose Open in an app and accidentally click a shortcut to my iDisk or a network drive... almost always results in a force-quit of the Finder. Safari isn't too great at handling it, either, for that matter.

This is a long way of saying that, yes, Windows handles networking much better than OS X.

The network does in fact time out. I know because I have this happen sometimes and cannot loose the file I am working on (yes, sometimes the last 10 minutes of work is that important). Its about 10 minutes. Which is INSANELY LONG.

I run into this with poor connections, not just when I am too dumb to eject the share before I go home. Here, the corporate WiFi sometimes "becomes compromized and is shut down...", or just crashes, which leaves me high and dry.

I would really love a hint that gets to the timeout value and makes it like... 20 seconds. Unfortunately, I am not good that deep in the guts. Last time I played around there I badly broke the wifi socket and it took some doing to reload it.