Contacts and calendars syncing problems

I have been an Apple fan for a long time, and finally managed to ditch Windows completely last year in favour of Macs for work as well as home. With the release of the iphone 3G I decided it was also time to ditch my trusty Palm and carry only one device around with me - big mistake that turned out to be. Ever since I bought the iphone I have expereinced serious performance problems with the address book app despite upgrading to 2.1, and more seriously I have had a nightmare with syncing calendars and contacts both via cable and MobileMe. Numerous calls to Apple's technical support have just resulted in more frustration as I have reset my data multiple times, reloaded my iphone firmware at least 4 times, reset my MobileMe account, but nothing they propose can get my calendars syncing again - the syncing worked initially for a few weeks but now I have four Apple devices (2 Macs, an ITouch and IPhone) plus MobileMe all with different calendar information. Calendars won't even sync via the USB cable. No-one at Apple can tell me how to fix this, and the issues have been referred to R&D!! Have other people out there experienced these kind of problems?

I wish I had an answer for you. I've read some good things about an alternative to MobileMe. People have been listing it as interways.net. I actually found it here: interWays - connect Your world.... A good basic account with a lot included is $4.99 a month, but there are a lot of useful add-ons (at least that I would be interested in) that could bump the price up close to the price of MobileMe.

Have you posted on the Apple Discussion forums? I've found quite a bit of help with MobileMe over there. Good luck!