So will GMail sync contacts with Outlook without completely messing them up now? That was the reason I barely ever used the GMail interface.
Here's what I use to sync contacts with Gmail and Outlook:
Hassle-free Contacts Sync • Soocial
It's been a life-saver for me. Increasingly I found myself working completely from Gmail but had a bunch of Outlook contacts that were in various states of "updatedness". It did a good job of not messing up First and Last Name with Outlook Sync. The biggest issue, however, was the display of names on devices that used Gmail.
I gave my Droid to Sonya and that's when I realized the big problem. Though first and last names weren't getting confused in Outlook, the display of names in Gmail was Last Name, First Name for contacts that had been synced from her Outlook. Sonya uses Outlook exclusively for her calendering and contacts and I wanted a way to be able to make the Droid seamless for her. I actually installed a different 3rd Party App that syncs Mail, Calendar, and Contacts from her desktop to her Gmail account because the Droid she uses utilizes Gmail data online. I changed her Inbox to iMap access so whatever was in her Inbox on her computer was also her Inbox on her Droid. If she made a calendar change in Outlook, the sync program would add/modify calendar events in Google.
The last sticking point was the display of contacts. The only way I could sort by Last Name on the Droid was to manually go into her Google Contacts and change all the Names to Last Name, First Name. That was before this change was made. I wish I had known the change was so imminent as I spent a good hour converting about 100 contacts this way. Now it will make syncing much easier.
As I said, I use Soocial for my Contact synchronization because that's all I'm interested in right now. I use my work Blackberry and that already syncs with my work e-mail, calendar, and contacts. Work network policy wouldn't allow me to sync my Gmail stuff with my work stuff so I'm more interested in just keeping personal contacts synced between my personal Outlook and my Gmail account. Soocial is free if you have < 250 contacts although I'm pretty close to busting that limit.
