Are there *any* good ways to synchronize Thunderbird/Lightning?

[Chris G]

I'm migrating my wife to Ubuntu (well, xubuntu actually) and while
most things have gone well the one big area that I really can't find a
good solution for is synchronization between her smartphone and the
desktop. 

She currently has a Treo 680 which synchronizes with Evolution (we
have that working) but she used Thunderbird on XP and would like to
stay with Thunderbird if she can.  There are also some issues with
Palm/Evolution synchronization, the calendar synchronization seems a
little odd for a start.

So, are there *any* ways to synchronize any smartphone with
Thunderbird and Lightning?  There are several packages which seem to
be sort of on the way but I can't find anything that looks really
functional and mature.

What I have found are:-

    Funambol - large and complex, appears to need a Funambol server
    and then clients for both Thunderbird/Lightning and the Treo. The
    Palm (Treo) client for Funambol is very limited and doesn't seem
    to have any development effort being put into it at the moment.

    J-pilot - this is what I used to use, it's basic but very
    reliable, it doesn't offer *any* connection with Thunderbird and
    Lightning. 

    Kolab - This is really a groupware suite which (probably) has
    clients for Thunderbird and for the Treo 680.

I have found several other Groupware servers which might be able to do
it but nothing very definite.  Apart from anything else we don't want a
Groupware (or server) solution really, we just want to synchronize the
smartphone with the desktop.  If you have a smartphone why would you
*want* a web accessible view, out on the road you use the smartphone,
back at home (or work) you use the desktop.

We're not locked into the Treo 680 but even other smartphones don't
offer much.  I have a Nokia E71 and synchronize that with eGroupware
(yet another groupware solution) but I'd much prefer to synchronize it
with Thunderbird or similar.

Does anyone here have any suggestions for good, workable smartphone to
desktop synchronization tools that work well in Linux?

-- 
Chris Green