Steve,
I have been programming for years in FPDos using scatter en gather.
When I converted to VFP (only some months ago), I too hesitated to continue using scatter/gather against tablebuffering.

Finally, I took the buffering path, and I'm not sorry at all I did. It took some time to fully understand how using buffering (and how transactions help to make it all work) but I'm very glad I took the time.

Look in the MSDN under "Programming for multiuser access" : that sections gives a very good example how to use buffering, transactions (you can't do without the cobination inmy opinion) and handle updateproblems and conflicts.