I've tried on Tiger and Leopard, with three or four iterations of Fusion releases, both from a Boot Camp partition and an image based virtual machine, and even on two different Macbook Pros.
Every time I used the feature, and every time I try to access a file in a shared folder, Fusion locks up the Windows XP application trying to access the file for 3-10 seconds.
The feature is clearly not stable. When will it be fixed?
Map the shared folders directly to a drive and access it through the drive (Z: in WIndows explorer), this way there will be no freeze: Fusion menubar > Help > VMware Fusion Help > Moving and Sharing Files with Your Mac > Sharing Files Between Virtual Machines and Your Mac > To view shared folders in a Windows guest by mapping them as a drive
The VMware Shared Folders Feature has been buggy and problematic since it was first introduced many years ago in Workstation and things haven't changed much so I wouldn't hold you breath while waiting.
While Boris's suggestion of mapping the VMware Shared Folder to a drive letter will most likely help some it does not fix the issues entirely.
The best performance usually is achieved by disabling the VMware Shared Folders and using what is directly available in the Host OS and Guest OS although this to may not be a 100% solution however I can't recall one person ever saying that they had better performance and less problems with VMware Shared Folders vs. OS Based Resource Sharing.
There is information in the OS X Help File
Finder menu bar > Help > Mac Help > Index > S > Sharing Files
In Windows Help there is information about sharing files.
Start > Help & Support > Networking and the Web > Sharing files, printer and other resources
There is also information in both platforms help files on how to connect to a network share.
I already map it to a drive, since I use the feature daily.
I used bridged on my last install on the previous machine, but if I ever started the virtual machine while not connected to the internet on my laptop, the network would crap out (with a very annoying warning dialogs) and refuse to restart until I restarted the virtual machine.
Improving Shared Folders is something I am driving with the team. There have been a number of improvements to Shared Folders in VMware Fusion 2.0 beta 1 and I am working with that team for more before we ship. I would recommend looking at the 2.0 betas for improvements in this area.
Pat
Shared Folder bugs and performance issue have been one of the most disappointing aspect about Fusion and the lack response from the pre-release beta 1 bug report even more abysmal.
It is great to hear it is being finally looked at and I can only hope that is major improvement. It is what has so far stopped me from getting rid of my native Bootcamp native Windows or unconditionally recommending the product to others. In fact with the rumours Sun takeover Parallels I was contemplateing giving my Parallels license a go again with the lastest upgrades in the coming months but I will wait and see what version 2.0 brings.
Chris
In fact with the rumours Sun takeover Parallels
That was an April Fools joke.