My setup:
– a corporate PC running Outlook with corporate Exchange
– a personal MacBook Pro using only iCal for my calendar and Address Book for contacts
– an iPhone
– personal contact list, calendar and email accounts with Yahoo and AIM

I run the Plaxo plug-ins for Outlook on my corp PC and for iCal and AB on my MacBook. I’ve set up Plaxo to sync my calendars and AB with both of those sync points plus Yahoo and AIM. I’ve setup iCal and AB on the MacBook to automatically sync with MobileMe in the cloud and that automatically syncs with my iPhone. Voila!

Pros:
– Everything syncs (Calendar and Address Book)
– Works with corporate exchange calendar (a HUGE plus)
– Very fast. I’ve never experienced more than a few minutes delay propagating events or contacts to all sync points.
– If I add a new contact from my personal Yahoo Mail interface (Y! will do that automatically if you want) it automatically shows up in all my AB.
– Plaxo is free

Cons:
– No email sync (like you, I am still working on that)
– You (might) need a MobileMe account
– Your desktop PC and MacBook need to be running and online in order for all data to sync quickly.

For the record, I know that Plaxo still gets a bad rap from a lot of people for the way their service used behave (years ago it used to be easy to accidentally spam your whole contact list). That issue has long been resolved, though, and their core sync product does work really well on a wide variety of platforms. I’d recommend giving the service a try.

But maybe, in time…….