[Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] chubnut:
I think that there are a quite a few problems here, mostly down to options like choice, availability, resources and functionality. You have to think about ease of use too.

Desktop sync has been the mainstay of personal and small business users for many years, especially where Exchange is not available or where employers have not enabled it for whatever IT reasons they have. In addition many people use full blown Outlook in their home lives (whether obtained leagally or not) and with desktop sync they have been able to maintain their devices. It's what people know and are used to. In addition most companies turn a blind eye to the desktop syncing as for most it saves money on having to buy devices for the staff, BB servers and licesnses etc. To an extent the data is still vaguely in their control.

Wireless sync is in my opinion excelent and something which I embrace. However, it's not going to be available on such a wide scale as desktop sync and definately not an option for many where their company does not want to enable Exchange. Many companies are going to loose the plot if they discover that employees are using Outlook connectors to establish links to Live even if it is just for contacts and calender!! No matter what anyone says, Live is not a secure envionment.

M$ need to accept a few home truths about trying to ram Live down peoples throats. There are functional disparities between the WP7 and Live itself as there is between Live and Outlook. This is also the case between Outlook and WP7 (although this has always been the case between mobile devices). Not everyone wants to use Live and not everyone can use Live especially from work machines, mostly there will be protocols to block this, my company for one doesn't allow it (although some of us have access due to MSDN subscriptions).

With this OS M$ are going for a particular share of the mobile market and good for them. About ****ing time, but I think they are underestimating the success of one particular piece of their software and that is Outlook. It is more widely used than they beleive. The cloud may be the future but for the majority of people, it's either unobtainable for their circumstances, unsecure or they are plain just not ready for it. This is not a bad thing generally but it is a bad thing for M$ if they don't see it and restrict the buying people's options. They won't get that share of the market.

Personally, I'm not using Live to sync my contacts and calendar and I definately don't use it for mail - I'm one who doesn't like it or trust it. My company haven't allowed Exchange as they like BB. My solution was to go for a hosted exchange option (until I can get my own Exchange server up and running - yes really). It suits me perfectly even if I do have to pay extra a month (£4) on top of my phone contract. It's instant, syncs all my machines as well as my device and it's secure. I still have to do drag and drop between the accounts (work and personal) but I'd have to do that anyway if I used Live. My contacts information remain intact and what fields exist between the device and Outlook syncs.

One thing that I feel we need to do is stop slagging people off if they don't want or can't use Live and are looking for alternative solutions to their prdicament. It's good that they want a WP. Let's try and help them find these solutions.