As far as I understand, for saving purposes, Publishing to Repository is an unnecessary step. ALL forms, in order to have their data saved, MUST BE "enabled" (Reader rights enabled), which can only be done using Acrobat Professional 8.0. Here are the steps:
Finish/save your form in Desinger - remembering that your text fields must have their binding set to normal as noted above. (You can close or minimize the program to lessen the confusion).
Open Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0 (NOT Reader!) and open the form you just created/saved in Designer.
Select Advanced>Enable Usage Rights in Adobe Reader.... It will then prompt you to save the form and go through the enabling process. At this point, you've enabled your form to allow the user to save their data. You can test this by closing out Professional and opening it through Reader and trying to save. Good luck!