Activesync is NOT that bad. It has problems sometimes, and yes those problems can range from seriously annoying to completely disastrous, but 99% of the time, it works correctly.
When you get your PPC, just follow the instructions that come with it for setting up AS. I would NOT reccommend connecting as a guest; you are going to want to sync your data and you might want to use it to back up data as well, if your PPC doesn't come with Pocket Backup. It's not hard, you'll do fine
