My solutions are fairly large, are in SourceGear Vault and are bound to VS2008 IDE. I find that it takes a while to simply open them.
In the long run, is it better to have the solutions bound to VS2008, just simply resolve the renegades later manually or use the Source Control IDE to check files out one at a time when the need arises. Productivity wise.
I prefer to keep these things separate. Let each tool do what it's good at. IDEs are bloated enough without slowing them down further with source control.
(I use CVS and Subversion from the command line, and Visual Studio for development. I don't use any of your modern "Source Control IDEs". 8-)
It depends. some source control solutions like svn does not require you to check anything out. Others like perforce and VSS lock the files locally and require a checkout.
I find IDE integration to be very important when a checkout paradigm is used. Every time you edit a file you have to context switch, find the file in the file system and checkout.
Subversion and cvs only care when you are done and ready to commit. Integration is less important on these systems.
The SCM should have an API that is completely standalone, with an appropriate integration to allow you to use it in the IDE if you wish, or from the command line, or via a shell integration, or an integration with a build tool etc etc.
This allows users to go with what they prefer, while allowing the tool to be effectively integrated with other tools (issue management, continuous integration tools etc).
SCM is (well should be) a commodity that enables you to get on with work while securing your code. Some SCM tools I've used do not have this mindset and are a tremendous pain.
I currently use SVN, so I use command-line interface, Tortoise (GUI, plugs into Windows Explorer) and an IDE (VS2008) without any source-control hooks.
When I used Perforce in the past (and as Byron Whitlock noted, P4 locks the files locally), I found it to be the most convenient to work from the command line. Again, the IDE was detached from the source control.
So, you don't have to integrate source control with IDEs and if that diminishes your productivity now, my recommendation is not to do it.