Contacts/Calendar in the cloud

As I mentioned in another thread, I'll be getting a new phone in a few weeks (iPhone or Android, we'll see!)... however I'm interested in a new way of syncing data across my PC, Laptop and Phone.

At the moment, I use Google calendar/contacts - which syncs reasonably well with my existing iPhone. However, it isn't perfect when it comes to syncing with Outlook (I've invested in some sync software called gSyncIt).

Is there a better way of keeping data in sync across many platforms? iCloud sounds like it may do this, but only if I go down the Apple route. If you're aware of any other alternatives, I'd be very interested!

I guess it depends on what it is specifically that you want to accomplish. I'll tell you what I do and what I use, in case it is of any help.

While I use my own domain for email, the email service is actually furnished by Google through their Google Apps Business Edition. I chose the Business edition, which is about 50 euro per year for one user, because I wanted to be able to sync Outlook 2010 with Google email (imap), calendar, tasks, and contacts. I also wanted 25 GB for email instead of the 7 GB offered by the standard edition.

The Apps Business Edition is not necessary for synchronizing contacts, calendar, and email with an Android phone, however. Just a regular Gmail account works fine for that.

When I am at home, I use my PC (Outlook or Thunderbird) to check my email (imap) and my calendar (Google Calendar), or edit my contacts (Google Contacts). When I am on the move, I use my Android phone to do the same things. If I add an event on my calendar on the PC, within minutes my Android phone has updated its calendar to reflect the changes. I can also add a new contact on my phone and it gets automatically sync'd with my Google Contacts.

I know many people on this forum have a general dislike of Google, and I am not interest in a discussion as to that opinion's validity; I'll simply say that for me Google's services have worked well, and the synchronization between my Android phone and Google account has been flawless thus far.

One criticism though: the add-on that provides synchronization between Outlook and Google isn't perfect. For the most part it works fine and quietly in the background, but in my case it crashed Outlook a few times and made Outlook switch off the Reading Pane which I had to reconfigure. I am personally going back to Thunderbird, which syncs just as well, if not better, with Google.

Thanks Core - that sounds fairly similar to what I do at the moment (but using the free apps version), however I've been having similar problems with Outlook. If I can't find any other solutions then I may end up migrating to the paid edition and use the exact same method - which may resolve some of the software bugs I've been having.