We have just signed up for Google Apps for Education as a trial for several departments (to ease the marking/feedback of work/homework using Google Docs). Google Gears would seem to be quite useful, if not vital, to guard against loss of Internet while working on Google Docs.

Has anyone found a way to deploy Google Gears acroos a network?

There is no MSI and no Silent mode for the downloadable exe. If fact this is the only official response I can find on the subject on the Google forum which says, basically, "no":

We also don't currently distribute the MSI installer, because the standard
EXE installer that you get from gears.google.com will also keep the Gears
installation up-to-date, which helps us ensure a consistent experience
across all of your users.

We are looking into adding a silent mode for the installer in the future and
we'll post to this forum when we do so.
Has anyone managed it?

Cheers.