Display Status in To & CC Fields Option Grayed Out

This was already brought up once
(http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.outlook.installation&mid=3826a1e4-8da8-49fc-96ee-cbeca7079442)
but I'm not sure my question is satisfied or if I'm statisfied with the
solution in general.

Up until recently, when users opened an email, they would see the Office
Communicator status of the person without having to hover their mouse over
them. This was true for laptops (with & without cache mode enabled) and
desktops (without cache mode enabled). The most recent update we pushed was
KB968858, at which point we started to receive calls stating the Communicator
status feature was now missing. Upon checking the options we noticed the
option was grayed out. The first thought was that maybe the machine GPO
hadn't been refreshed in a while but after receiving multiple calls and
others in IT pointing this out, that couldn't be the case. (We're constantly
running gpupdate /force /boot for testing purposes.) To staisfy curiousity I
checked our GPO, but nothing jumped out as being the culprit.

I tested the cached mode vs non-cached mode option feature & do agree the
option is available when in cached mode and disabled when not. However, our
GPO disables cached mode on desktops, so it would not have been on to begin
with.

Also in our testing, we took a machine that exhibited the problem,
uninstalled the KB, rebooted then checked Outlook once it was back up. Sure
enough, on a Desktop with cached mode disabled, the options were enabled and
we could enable/disable it (the Display Status options) freely.

Using procmon, I located what I believe to be the correct registy entries
Outlook RegSets when enabling/disabling the status options, but with cached
mode enabled, no matter what I set the registry setting to, its always
disabled. Its as if Outlook ignores the registry settings altogether.

Is this a situation where a call to Microsoft is required or is further
testing necessary?

--
Julius G. Perkins, IV
Enterprise Systems
Workstation Architect