I am looking to get out of windows, but since I last checked there was no mobile device that could sync contact/calendar/files/tasks with thunderbird (or similar program,) without putting all the info into google's cloud.

Right now I am using Palm Treo Pro with windows and outlook (total drag.) However there are features that I can't do without: qwerty keyboard, 3.5mm jack, spreadsheets/calendar/contacts/tasks/office, and it syncs with outlook.

Is there an option out there in the open source world (without the cloud) with these features? I'm hoping to stay under 200$, but I would look into anything if necessary. Also I need something pretty easy to use because I am not very tech savy.

(also- the phone aspect is a nice bonus, but really I just need a little computer; so whatever carrier doesn't matter because I probably won't hook it up anyways.)

Which way do you want to sync? Thunderbird to mobile device, mobile to Thunderbird or both.

Out of your list of spreadsheets/calendar/contacts/tasks/office, AFAIK Thunderbird does not have a spreadsheets, calendar, tasks or office.

I sync Thunderbird contacts and Orage (Xfce's calendar) to a Nokia ExpressMusic phone by manually exporting the address book and the calendar then use self-written bash and awk scripts to re-format them and load them to the phone using gnokii. It's not slick and a few contacts get lost during the loading More in my LQ blog here and here.

The latest version of Orage supports programmatically exporting the calendar to save one manual step but Thunderbird does not support that and its address book format is so labyrinthine and undocumented that it is improbable that any code can be written to take the address book directly from the file system. The Thunderbird devs have been intending to implement a cleaner address book data format for a while but that now seems unlikely given the development status of Thunderbird. Perhaps the SeaMonkey devs will do it with their fork. Would be nice.

so there is now way that you know of to automatically sync contacts without using google, microsoft, or an ipod?

Correct but I haven't investigated using Evolution instead of Thunderbird because I prefer a light desktop (Xfce). It would be great to find a way so I could change from the Nokia ExpressMusic to something more current.

So what do professionals who have security constraints use? They can't use window, to easily hacked, obviously they can't use google's cloud, so do they use apple? I find that hard to believe, Apple doesn't even have a qwerty phone! I might just suck it up and go with Apple, except I can't type on those screens.