Finally solved. Not kde but lots seem to have read this thread. I don't know if the same problem is wide spread but on opensuse 11.4 mount.cifs is crippled. This results in the crazy situation where a user needs the root password to enter their own nas access password. In my case I copied mount.cifs from 11.2 onto my system and created a group called nas and set that as the group for mount.cif plus suid etc. Membership of the group is root and the intended user. It's then possible for the specified user to mount network drives without any problems. This isn't tied to the content of fstab but this needn't matter given a script to log a user into the nas.

The results are the same as using kde's connect to a microsoft network drive. It's all instantaneous unlike samba but I can now save to and open from the nas from any application and also click launch off it.

I don't know if all disto's kde installations have this limitation on kde's connect but given the increasing popularity of nas's and disc less workstations etc etc not allowing the .desktop incantations to work correctly is a rather strange way to go. Samba for me at least had exactly the same problems. This sort of crippling is highly likely to drive people back to windoze where if it's about it works. Linux seems to be getting to a stage where making it work is nigh on impossible for many even with a root password.

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Has an openSUSE bug been filed so it can be fixed?