i Have seen that the calendar app has multiple colors, and the colors can be labeled on a separate screen as to what they pertain, not sure about contacts, but I think you can set them to private so they are not synced(I know not exactly what you are talking about, but that is all I have seen so far)

The 'best' sync is going to be with the PC Suite, second best is going to be the Mail for Exchange app which can do contacts and calendars. Unfortunately their is no support for syncml over http....yet.

There is syncevelotution already on previous version of maemo, but you kind of said convoluted, disparagingly so...