2 PCs, 1 Smartphone, 1 sync, 1 Outlook data file. Can it be done?

[gai-jin]

Having just installed vista and office 2k7 on my laptop and desktop, I figure this is a good point to try and get a fresh start.

I'd love to have hosted exchange, but can't justify the cost, and the couple of times I've tried using a service, it turned out to be terribly slow from the PC.

Is it possible to use outlook on both PC's, with one data file? Using offline folders, for example?

Or, I plan to run Hamachi on both, perhaps the data file could be in a shared folder mapped to the laptop. The downside there would be that both pc's would have to be on and connected to use outlook at all on the laptop...

I don't want to deal with syncing the phone back and forth between the two as a method of 'sync' ing the pc's, especially since I also have a work PC in the mix that I eventually would like to have working with this as well.

My email is currently with google for your domain and brought into outlook via pop, calendar is kept in outlook.

Any suggestions?

[Mike Temporale]

If possible use IMAP for email. That way the messages stay on the server, and the read/reply/sent status is all saved on the server. So you can do email from any computer or web page and keep the correct state. It's much easier than trying to replicate email between computers.

[onlydarksets]

I would do IMAP for email, as Mike mentioned. I have also used SynchPST for a while, which worked pretty well:
http://www.synchpst.com/