ntfs-3g...just for occasional use??
 

I have been stung by ntfs-3g I reckon :-(

I setup pclinuxos on my sisters machine and set ntfs-3g for read/write on her windows system partition.

I thought it was a good idea to have her continue to use her current save folder for all her photo's etc ....so she was saving her files to a desktop folder on the ntfs drive in both windows and linux...but as she got used to using linux and wasn't booting into windows much, I assume the ntfs system was getting unmaintained unless ntfs-3g supports scandisk/defrag of the ntfs drive from linux??? SO I assume I'd have to boot into windows regularly to perform maintanace on the ntfs file system (that would suck)....

I recommend you don't resize etc the ntfs file system unless to have used defrag on it...

Is ntfs-3g designed to be used regularly as an ntfs driver under linux for ntfs filesystems that keeps the ntfs filesystem in good working order without the use of windows tools such as defrag or scandisk????

No, ntfs-3g is only for read/write access to Windows partitions, not for any maintenance tasks - you'll still have to boot into Windows for defrag, etc.