I was able to do it once around when I first got my laptop, but have been unable to since. It's been a problem since spring quarter, and now it seems to be about 10 seconds ahead. I can tell because if my laptop says 9:10 AM and i make a post, the post time is 9:09 AM. I get this error: Strangely enough, if I close it and go back to it, it says it was done successfully, even though it wasn't because it's still 10 seconds off. It's not a huge deal, but still. My desktop doesn't stay perfectly synchronized still, but by the end of the day, it's only about five seconds ahead compared to 10 seconds like before, and the synchronization works there.
This can be locked. I think something at the college prevented it from connecting to the time server properly. I just synchronized it successfully here at home.