thanks; i mostly got the contacts sync'ed without problem, although there are a handful that have a mangled N field causing problems (don't know if it's the palm, jpilot, kpilot, my moto phone, etc, that did the mangling). i'll give the spreadsheet app a try to see if it will fix it. actually, opensync/gpe has been relatively painless as far as linux sync goes. if i could find a way to sync notes/memos, i'd be golden--worst case i can just set up rsync, as they're all just txt files.