Hold on to your wallet! MobileMe is great, but with a little work, Google can sync your Mac’s most important stuff -- mail, contacts, and calendars -- to your iOS device and back for free. Before taking the plunge, make sure all the most recent data is on your Mac, then back it up with Time Machine so you can restore it if necessary.

Adding your Gmail account to Mail is simple. In Mail, select Mail > Preferences from the menu bar, then click Accounts and the + button. Enter your name and Google email address and password in the Add Account screen, then click Continue to finish the setup. Check out more details about Google’s preferred Mail settings at goo.gl/D3bf.

You won’t see a progress bar as your events are imported. They’re too fancy for Google.

In iCal’s sidebar, select the calendar you want to sync, choose File > Export, then save the file to your Desktop. Log in to Google Calendar (google.com/calendar) and click Settings under My Calendars. Next, click Import Calendar, select the iCal file on your Mac, choose a Google calendar as its destination, then click Import. Don’t panic if the process takes as long as a minute or so. Back in iCal, select iCal > Preferences, then click Accounts and the + button. Choose a Google account and enter your Google info. After the “new” Google calendar appears in the sidebar, you can delete the original.

Address Book’s settings are simple, but you’ll need iSync to do the heavy lifting.

In Address Book, select Address Book > Preferences, then click the Accounts button and select Synchronize With Google. Click Configure and enter your Google user info. Next, launch iSync from your Applications folder and in iSync > Preferences, select Show Status In Menu Bar. Select Sync Now from the iSync menu bar icon, and your contacts will be whisked to Google’s cloud. While all other data syncing should occur automagically, you’ll have to manually sync from the menu bar to upload and receive changed contacts in Address Book quickly. Hey, free is free.

Using Microsoft Exchange to sync Google data to iOS? Weirder things have happened.

On your iOS device, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, then tap Add Accounts and choose Microsoft Exchange. Enter your Google account address in the Email and Username fields, but leave the Domain blank. Enter your Google account address and password in the Username and Password fields. Tap Next to continue. You may need to type “m.google.com” in the new Server field, then tap Next again. In the subsequent screen, you can choose what data is synced -- Mail, Contacts, or Calendars. Each is on by default. To leave them that way, tap Done. Your Gmail and the contacts and calendar data you exported to Google should start beaming to your device in moments. If your calendar doesn’t sync, you may need to visit m.google.com/sync in Mobile Safari on the iOS device, sign in with your Google information, then choose the calendar you want to sync in the resulting window.

Supercharge Google Calendar in the Labs

As with Gmail, some terrific Labs features can enhance Google Calendar’s web interface. But like all Labs features, they might disappear...or they might get promoted to be standard features. Our favorites:

Year View: Lets you see a year at a glance.

Next Meeting: Shows you what’s just ahead in your schedule.

Jump to Date: Quick navigation to a specific date in the future.