After 30 man hours spent on trying to get everything in sync:

Question

I have learned that:
1/ the data on iCloud has to be considered the data base that is in control.
2/. Shut down other devices that are using iCloud.  They will continue to sync while you are trying to clean up your calendar entries and contacts.
3. Most of the calendar duplicates are not duplicates, but are the same appointment in different time zones. If you look at your calendar entries in outlook with the list view, you can see the different times.
4/. The only way to get rid of the duplicates is to login to your iCloud account using Safari. I found the week view the easiest to work in. it is as low and tedious process, but it does work.  If you have another windows device, you can open up outlook and watch the duplicates go away.
5/. The best thing to do is the delete all of your contacts and calendar entries in all of your windows devices.  Thia can be done by looking at the entries in the outlook list view and doing a control A followed by a delete.  This was the most frightening step, because I have always considered my outlook data to be the source data for other devices.  I did backup all of my outlook date using the export command.  I may never use the backup, but I feel more comfortable knowing that it exists somewhere other than iCloud.
6/. Tasks works for me as is.  therefore, I didn't delete the tasks.
7/ I still can't get my me.com email to work in outlook.  I will just get that on my iPad and iPhone until Apple fixes that mess.
Good luck and thanks for the lack of help Apple.

Answer 1

mjr2k01545 wrote:
1) CDs are apparently a dying physical media. They anticipate that digital downloading will replace buying CDs in the next few years (sounds like a sales tactic to me...)
OK, but that has nothing to do with the music that you have already bought on CD.
2) It's easier to retrieve music that you buy from iTunes than is anything else if something were to happen to my iPhone.
Keep a backup!
3) The music is in AAC which is smaller than MP3 and sounds better (I don't have a home theater system in my room nor do I have a sound system in my car).
That is an old-fashioned belief left over from the days of 128 kb/s encoding. At 256 (which is the rate now used by most online music download stores including iTunes and Amazon) MP3 and AAC are equivalent in audio quality. And at 256, they are all the same size.