Please explain use of eTransmit in ACAD 2005

I have been using etransmit (ACAD 2005) to issue drawings to clients and
other external people for quite a while now. Up to the other day I had never
heard any problems of file association (particularly images and xrefs) from
anyone I had sent them to. That is I presumed that when they unzipped the
files to their own directory structure then all drawings would open
correctly and that xrefs and images etc would associate to their new folder
location.

In fact in most cases I would only etransmit a couple of drawings and them
copy the contents of those zip files into a folder (on my PC/server) along
with the remaining dwg files in the project, since all drawings would have
ther same associated files (ie images, xrefs etc) so why do all through
etransmit. I would then burn all these files to CD and issue to the client
(ie no zip files at all).

Don't worry I will get to my question very soon.

A fellow drafter was just issuing drawings and xrefs to a client on CD
without using etransmit and he was told the other day thet they had to go to
each drawing and reload all xrefs (which he supplied) to suit the new folder
they were saved to at the client's PC/server.

I have now realised that there is an option to etransmit drawings with the
option "place in one folder" (can't remember exact words) under the
etransmit options. I have trialed this option and it seems to work OK no
matter where the client saves the files but the images still need to be
reloaded. Why is this?

When first using etransmit I thought it was only there to collect ALL
associated files for a particular drawing(s), similar to the old "pack 'n
go". I also assumed, in the past, that I or the client could just copy files
to any folder so long as all xrefs, images etc were placed in the same
location as the dwg files, then the drawings would open and find associated
files because they were filed together in the one folder. Is this not true
either?

I am mainly asking if you can explain the real workings of etransmit and why
it should be used instead of just collecting ALL the associated files
(particularly, xrefs and images) manually and what sort of problems can
arise at the receiver's end when either method is used to collect the
associated files for issue (ie either by etransmit or by manual means)?

Sorry for the long-winded explannation but there seemed to be many options
to delivering drawings to external people - which works the best and why?.

regards

PeterH