A lot of talk is going on about the current lack of support for syncing Pocket PCs and Smartphones with Outlook on Windows Vista, this post is to clear up some of the confusion.
Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) in the final version of Windows Vista will be automatically downloaded from Windows Update when you plug your device in. This application will replace Active Sync.
The story so far...
Beta 2 (5384) was the only public version of Windows Vista so far to contain this functionality, and it was limited – only supporting Windows Mobile 5 devices. 2003SE and below currently have no support.
The current latest public build as of today is Pre-RC1 (5536), like the several technical beta builds before it 5536 has no support what-so-ever for syncing to a mobile device.
Microsoft have yet to confirm or deny if WMDC will be functional in RC1, it was with Beta 2 and considering RC1 will go out to far more people than Beta 2 it would be utterly stupid not to have this functionality ready to go shortly after the release of RC1.
Windows Mobile 2003SE and below support is generally unknown, Microsoft have said it will be functional by the time Windows Vista goes RTM, but have made no comments on RC1.
Update: A version for RC1 is coming soon.