Backups on every machine
Windows comes with backup software http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/backup-and-restore (win7) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320820 (XP).
Also there is scheduler so you can schedule backups to run every hour.
Maybe you are already aware of both of these but many still forgot how powerful windows itself can be, there is no really need for third party programs when doing basic jobs like automation, backups, user control, device management/control or network management/control. And if you need more customized backups or some special information stored with backups then just go and write batches to do the job.
Propably most information you want to backup is found under %HOMEPATH%\Application Data\
, %HOMEPATH%\Local Setting
and personal files like bookmarks and documents of course. You really should exclude temporary/cache files from backups...
Map network drives for docs
This propably is simplest thing to do if file server is already available, just folders for users, map drives and tell users to save all files to network. Definitely, this is not foolproof as someone can just forgot to use network drive...
Or maybe add network share for profiles
and use user profiles from there but I dont recommend this as it can raise other problems (even with proper caching) if for some reason network fails or is unavailable for some other reasons.
Here is some reading about roaming profiles http://computertips.toups.info/roaming/RoamingXPPro.htm and some whynots Link
Proper way to achieve this is setting up domain and AD.
Or you can go with active directory
Of course good way to go is setting up domain controller, ad and file server. Decisions should be made depending on machine count and other requirements, one could save a lot of work when setting up ad while others could save a lot by using per machine backups and settings.
I did not include anything about server side backups as I assume that server backups / data protection is already correctly setup.