Mike's PC Tips and Tricks (my opinions -- your mileage may vary)
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iPhone Tips

Syncing contacts:

1/22/16 note: I don't think most people need to read the below.  Pretty sure Google stuff and iPhones work seamlessly now.  Leaving this here until I confirm...


if you don't use Outlook, use Gmail/Google Contacts to store your contacts.  New contacts entered into Gmail/Google Contacts are automagically pushed to your iPhone address book, and changes on the iPhone are pushed back to Gmail/Google Contacts.  Total concordance between your iPhone address book and an online address book that you can reach from any computer.  Details:

--Do an iTunes sync so that all of your iPhone contacts stuff is backed up.
--If all of your contacts are already in Gmail, export your contacts to a Google .csv file (you can Google up instructions for that). That way you're set in case something goes wrong.
--If you're merging contacts from both Gmail and your iPhone, my instructions below should work. I think. But, I've never done it. So, make sure you did the two backup steps.
--If possible, do the below from a WiFi connection for greater speed.

--At the end of the following Google Help instructions, you'll be faced w/ a question on your iPhone: "Keep on my iPhone" or "Delete" -- choose Keep. Here you go, do all of these: Setting up Google Sync with your iOS device
--You s/be done, but you're not. The sync is only one way -- from Gmail to your iPhone. You can test it by creating a dummy contact in Gmail and seeing if it propagates to your iPhone (the easiest way to get the iPhone to sync is to go to your contacts list, touch the Groups button, and then touch the sync arrow at the top left).

--Hook your iPhone back up to your computer. Click on the iPhone device to open up the Sync tabs. On the Info tab, make sure the Sync Contacts box is checked and choose "Google Contacts" from the dropdown box. Click Apply to do the sync.
--Now, uncheck the Sync Contacts box and Apply. From now on, your contacts will be synced w/ Gmail over the Internet.
--Go back in to your Gmail contacts and refresh if needed. All of the contacts that were on your phone s/be there (along w/ any Gmail contacts that you already had).
--Export your Gmail contacts again if you had contacts on your iPhone (pick a new filename). Just in case -- now you have a backup of all of the contacts from both places.

--Open your iPhone settings, go to Mail, select the Gmail Exchange account, turn off Contacts. You'll be asked if you want to delete all contacts on the phone -- select Yes. No worries, you just doublechecked Gmail and exported a backup in the last two steps.
--Go back and turn Contacts back on; when prompted w/ the "Keep on my iPhone" or "Delete" that you'll remember from above, select Delete this time. If you don't select Delete, you may run into problems w/ duplicates or future contacts that you add on your iPhone not being propagated to Gmail.
--Open your iPhone settings, go to Mail, scroll down to Contacts, and make sure the Default Account is set to the Google CardDAV account you set up above.  Otherwise, new contacts you add on your phone may be sync'd to, say, iCloud instead. 
--On your iPhone, create a dummy contact, go back to Gmail and refresh, and make sure your test contact propagated back to Gmail. That's it!

Additional tip: do you like to be notified of new e-mail messages as they come in? If so, skip this. OTOH, if you only want to download e-mail to your iPhone when you open the Mail app, do the following to significantly reduce drain on your battery: Settings >> Mail. Scroll down to "Fetch New Data" and touch; change Push to OFF and Fetch to MANUALLY. That way your phone isn't constantly accessing the Internet to see if you have new e-mail One caveat: I don't rely on my calendar on my iPhone -- I'm not sure whether or not Push=OFF affects your calendar notifications. You could always test it. Maybe a separate Exchange account for a calendar might make sense, too. I'm not sure, sorry. I only know that Push e-mail is a huge battery killer, so I don't do it, I hope that helps!

Do you have contacts that you added to your phone in the past that are not sync'd with Google Contacts?  If they are iCloud contacts, here's how to get 'em sync'd:
1. Sign on to iCloud and select all contacts.
2. Export them to a vCard file.
3. Sign on to the Google Contacts Web interface and import the vCard file.  Done.