synchronize Outlook desktop email with Palm Centro

[Formel_Eins]

It seems I have spent a lifetime with Palm chat support and phone support. Actually it was 6 hours over the weekend in chat and about an hour today on the phone with India. It seems that the Palm support reps don’t have much of a clue. They sent me on a journey of endless configurations, deleting and re-configurations with more problems and errors at the end. The Palm support people all seem to think that synchronizing Outlook desktop email with Palm Centro should work. There are settings for synchronizing VersaMail and Outlook in the Conduit (HotSync) custom settings. But so far I had no luck.
1. Is there any way to synchronize Outlook desktop email with Palm Centro? I am not on MS exchange server. I used older versions of VersaMail and it used to sync with my outlook folder. Messages read on the Palm device would show up as “read” on the desktop, sent from Palm in “Sent Items” on my desktop and “deleted” would be deleted from my desktop. I think it even synced a “Filed” folder. This all worked with a POP account.
Right now I am out all day reading and answering emails on the Centro. When I get back to my desktop instead of just being able to sync my email accounts I have to go thru all emails again. The reason for most users to have a PDA in the first place is to save time. This new Palm/VersaMail combination seems to make twice the work for me.
I have 10 email accounts that I have setup for different purposes. Exchange email accounts is not currently an option for me since charges are typically in the range of $15 per month for each account ($150/month) and right now I pay $10 web-hosting and unlimited email accounts. IMAP instead of POP would be an option since my contract is up in a month and I could move to a hosting provider with IMAP.
2. If the answer to above is yes, is there any possibility of maintaining some kind of an email folder structure on the Centro as well as the Desktop?

BTW I am using Vista, Palm Desktop 4.1.4 and HotSync 6.0.1 (The last Palm rep told me to uninstall Desktop 6.2.2)

[TazUk]

I think the IMAP route would be the best way to go depending on how big your mailbox is

[Formel_Eins]

Hi TazUk,
I have been playing with gMail IMAP for the past week. It seems very sluggish in Outlook and I also notices’ some connection issues (about 3-4 in a week).

[TazUk]

Outlook's implementation of IMAP is pretty poor, even Outlook Express handles it better I use Thunderbird as my mail client and that handles IMAP just fine