I'm having the same problems. We just purchased a new license on the 3rd.
I installed Small Office Admin on a Win Svr 2008 R2 server and went through the setup wizard. I deployed to one Windows 7 pc and one Windows XP pc. Both showed the status as unknown. Neither client had the server name in the settings, so I entered it manually on one pc. It then showed as connected and looked well, but then showed as disconnected sometime after that and still shows disconnected.
Also, the Update server definitions job always fails and the link to download the client install does not work.
If I don't find a solution quick, my boss is going to want me to look into another solution.