There are lots of sync apps... I sync my phone every couple days via PC Suite which syncs with Outlook. There is a full GPE suite to sync with that on almost all linux flavors. I seem to recall an app or two in devel that lets you sync contacts with Google as well. Plus the phone itself can act as if it's a laptop and sync via bluetooth with other phones, or any device that supports active sync. (I did a sync with my N6230 with no intermediate device, just paired and pulled all the data over in one hit.)

Try doing a forum search before calling things useless. It's really not that hard to find apps for this. A simple search for "sync" on the forum yields plenty of solutions.