kde 4.1 config issues

[pkaplan1 at comcast.net]

I'm having inconsistencies between some apps on different laptops both with KDE 4.1.

One example is that knetworkmanager (3.5.9) appears in the system tray on one machine, but not the other.  Similarly, I can't get smb4k to go to the system tray on one machine although it will launch as an application and seems to work OK.
A different example (in this case the problem is the opposite machine) is that the panel clock on one machine is only as wide as it needs to be to see the digits displaying the time, where as on the other machine the clock takes up a lot of space judging from how close the nearest widget can be placed.

I've tried deleting ~/.kde4, but it doesn't seem to solve the problem on either machine; the behavior is consistent on the machine where the problem was first noted, so the problem lies outside ~/.kde4

I'm at a loss as to how to fix or trouble shoot.  Any ideas?

Paul