Plaxo, Gmail and MobileMe

I'm interested in knowing what solutions people have arrived at for organising their email, calendars and address books.

Plaxo and Gmail are an integral part of my work life so I've spent the last two weeks looking for a way to satisfactorily sync my iPhone and MacBook Pro to my Gmail and Plaxo accounts.

To date, my set-up works like this:-

Calendar

My iPhone is synced to my Gmail calendars using Exchange. This allows near instant updates and the ability to see multiple calendars (including calendars shared with me). My Mac is using CalDav to achieve the same. So far, it works seamlessly.

Address Book

I have put Plaxo at the centre of my address book organisation. Any updates I make to either my iPhone, MacBook or Gmail address books are automatically updated to everything else within 24 hours. Not perfect, but I went this way because I wasn't prepared to pay for MobileMe for just address book syncing, and because Gmail can't be put at the centre because it can corrupt snail-mail addresses. So my iPhone syncs with Plaxo once every 24 hours using the Plaxo app, my Mac syncs straight away using the Plaxo app, and my Gmail address book syncs, well, I'm not sure when but it does. BTW - Plaxo doesn't seem to support the iPhone field in the iPhone so if you go down this path don't save mobile numbers as iPhone addresses or they might get stripped out. This happened to me last week. Very annoying.

Mail

This has been the biggest nightmare of all which is ironic since it really should be the simplest. I had a list of goals here. To have seamless sync between Mac Mail, Gmail and iPhone Mail. To be able to archive mail using any of the three. To have read mails be marked 'read' on all systems. And 'push mail' for all folders I choose, not just the Inbox. Also, to use other gmail email addresses for which I have not created accts on my iPhone or Mac (I have other Gmail accts that forward to one key gmail acct).

Right now, I'm going for Exchange on the iPhone and imap in Mail. Exchange allows me to push folders of my choice. When you delete a message on the iPhone it is actually archived in Gmail (not ideal but it works). So far so okay. But now for the problems: I'm not able to choose which Gmail folders to show. This is a nuisance since my Gmail accts has over 100 'folders' which while critical really do not need to be seen on the iPhone.

Also the folder structure in Mac mail seems unnecessarily complicated. Why do I need to see folders for both what is on the mac and what is on the server when I want everything on the server to be fully synced with what is on the mac? And why is my Mac telling me it is downloading 220,000 (!) emails for them fourth time?

I gor round the multiple email address issue by adding them in the Email Address field separated by commas.

Conclusion

My calendar sync works perfectly. My address book sync works but the lack of a push sync because of Plaxo is annoying. But Gmail sync is far from perfect.

So my question is what have the rest of you done to organise your mail, contacts and calendars. I've spent two weeks scouring the Internet for one article with the perfect solution (and all the options) and it odes not exist. I'm hoping that with your feedback we can create such an article.

So can I ask you all to offer your feedback on the above, comment on any errors I have made (I'm sure there are a couple), and to offer your own ideas. With your help, we can create one 'perfect' message for the world of Mac users to share.

Thanks,
Dom