Um, wow. Google today releases Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It unfortunately only works with Educational and Premier Edition users (Premier costs 50 bucks per user per year) but now gives you complete, Exchange-like sync between Outlook and Google's servers.
What this means for a freelancer like me is that I now have robust, offline access to my email, contacts, calendar, and (I presume1) tasks. I'll also have my email "backed up" locally, and I can now competently sync my google data to my Windows Mobile device without running a couple of half-baked sync services.
Interestingly enough, I'm currently watching Outlook create email folders through the sync process using all the labels I've created in gmail.
[1] Tasks have always been kind of flighty in google apps, and I haven't seen any hit my Outlook yet during the initial sync process... although it's still running.
UPDATE #2: Bummer, no tasks sync. Yet. Hopefully this will get implemented in the not-too-distant future.
UPDATE #1: Well, I should get comfortable seeing my contacts on my phone sorted by first name since google doesn't do the firstname/lastname thing. That and seeing all the extra cruft google considers a "contact," such as everything in the "all contacts" lists which is comprised of everyone you've written to but haven't added to "My Contacts."