> 'Files written' actually specifies how many files 
total
> in the website. What you should be looking at 
is 'Files
> updated'. This is the value that indicates how many
> files were new since you last updated the downloaded
> website.

sorry i should clarify that identical files were 
actually being re-downloaded even though nothing has 
been updated. i double-checked by creating a new 
project with a different, bigger site (220kb) -- same 
thing, the "update" mode is still resulting in every 
file being re-downloaded. (both sites i tried 
contained all static pages.)