How to synchronise IMAP address book in Thunderbird, with or without Kolab?

I am setting up an IMAP account on my website's email, to use as webmail and on 2 laptops. As far as I can see, IMAP promises much but crucially fails to deliver. It does a great job syncing the emails in the three locations, but it is worse than useless having 3 separate address books all out of sync.
The TB docs mention the SyncKolab add-on to sync the address books. But this is complex and frustrating. If it works at all, I can't puzzle out how.
What syncKolab seems to do is to set up a new folder of the server called "contacts" and to place a message-form record in that folder for each address in the laptop address book. What good does that do me ...? Does this solve the problem in some way I'm not seeing? What I need is that the actual address book on the server contains the addresses on the laptops, and vice versa. I don't get it, how the server fold which Kolab creates, helps me. The server address book is not updated.
I do not need calendar or task sync, just address book.
With or without SyncKolab; indeed, with or without Thunderbird! how do I sync the address book on my IMAP server with my laptops?
Many thanks
Andy

looking at the add-on, the idea is simple, use an imap folder for address book data, very similar to what Yahoo does with the Y!Messages folder to store their chat clients archived messages.
install the add-on in two different Thunderbird installations and it uses that folder to synchronize the address book.
These instructions look simple. http://www.gargan.org/en/Mozilla_Extensions/SyncKolab/Installation/
All that would be left would be to modify the account in Thunderbird not to show that folder so it is not a distraction.

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I just purchased a new laptop and have dowloaded Thunderbird for my e-mail as that was what I was using on desktop. I have 2 e-mail accounts, my personal e-mail addresses came thru with no difficulty however my other account the contacts in address book didn't come thru. So question is how can I get address book imported for this account too. My desktop is Windows XP and my laptop is Windows 8
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The neat thing to do would be to copy the profile from the XP machine to the W8 machine. This would have transferred your messages, your account settings and your Address Book and much else.
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Having said that, I don't understand what you mean by "my personal e-mail addresses came thru with no difficulty however my other account the contacts in address book didn't come thru"; unless you have moved the profile folder over, I don't understand why ''any'' contacts should have transferred.
If you have in fact moved the profile folder, then I'm puzzled as to why the transfer of address books has been incomplete. However the export and import route should be able to reclaim the missing address book(s).

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Process:         Address Book [2953]
Path:            /Applications/Other Apps/Address Book.app/Contents/MacOS/Address Book
Identifier:      com.apple.AddressBook
Version:         5.0.3 (883)
Build Info:      AddressBook-8830000~1
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [191]
Date/Time:       2011-07-25 10:24:41.714 +0800
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7 (11A511)
Report Version: 9
Interval Since Last Report:          220669 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           24
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   11
Anonymous UUID:                      083B7EEC-DCAD-401A-9503-5DED8470F702
Crashed Thread: 0
Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
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dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries
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Symbol not found: ___appStartDate
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How to synchronise IMAP address book in Thunderbird, with or without Kolab?

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