ITouch to iPad - Contacts/Calendar transfer should be a no-brainer; isn't

Question

I've got an iPod Touch, which I'm very pleased with, and I bought an iPad for those times when I didn't need the portability of the iTouch and/or I wanted a bigger screen to work on. Though of course, the iPad has lots of other nice attributes.
The iTouch has my Contacts on it, and my Calendar, with lots of appointments and stuff. I figured it would be easy to sync/transfer them across to the iPad. I figured wrong
I guess Apple still think of these devices as driven off a PC with iTunes, as the early iPods had to be. But, apart from my music, this isn't the case; the Calendar and Contacts on the iPod Touch are typed in there, live there, and aren't synced with anything on the PC. I hope they are *backed up* on the PC, in case of loss, and can be restored from there; but this is all.
So I get the iPad, and I'm still reeling from the fact that it will do nothing without first being connected to a PC (although it's got wifi, even 3G in my case, and can perfectly well get apps and music independently of a PC), though I can see that a PC connection, in good time, could be useful.
Particularly to read my iTouch's backup and sync the stored data to the iPad's Contacts and Calendar. You'd think perhaps; but no go.
Contacts; needs to go via a Windows Address Book. So for the very first time, I sync the iTouch with a WAB, trembling slightly with the fear that iTunes will say 'Oh, let's copy this blank address book all over his existing Contacts'. But it didn't, and all went well.
Apart from the Contacts being sorted all wrong now on the iPad, causing my wife to declare it unusable, until I found that, miles away from the Contacts app, under the Settings app, I could change the default (First, Last) sort to (Last, First). Sheesh. What usability expert decreed that the settings for an app should be anywhere but in that app?
But the Calendar is worse. Apparently, I can only sync it via Outlook, 2003 or greater. So I've got to find a portable DVD drive, plug it in the netbook the iPad is synced with, load up Office, install Outlook on the netbook, which it's never had and doesn't need apart for this, and hope I can get the Calendar part working (or at least installed) enough for this sync, without having to pretend to Outlook that I'm going to connect it to anything.
And thank goodness I've got a free license slot on Office, so at least I don't have the buy the thing just for this - but I'm aware not everyone will have.
'All' that then remains is to sync the iTouch into Outlook, and then sync that out into the iPad.
All of this is not the straightforward user experience I might have hoped for.
Is there an easier way? Someone please tell me there's an easier way.
But I think all this points to a growing disconnect here that Apple needs to get its head around. Early iPods needed the mothership of iTunes on a PC, or they could do nothing at all. The iPod Touch, with wifi, got closer to severing the umbilical cord, but still couldn't quite manage it.
The iPad, with wifi and 3G, should be able to sever the link completely, but it can't. Yet?
And with this historical dependence on the iTunes PC mothership there seems to go the continuing presumption that the iDevice is the slave in a master/slave relationship.
This started to break down when iDevices started being able to get stuff on their own, bypassing the mothership, but I feel like I'm way ahead of Apple in thinking that my iTouch, and especially now my iPad, ought to be a lot more autonomous than they actually are.
But enough polemic. My question is Contect/Calendar transfer, as set out above;
is there an easier way?
Someone please tell me there's an easier way......

Answer 1

MobileMe is $99 a year, but yes, it would meet the needs of the OP very well as well as add some additional features such as iDisk, find my iDevice, mail, gallery, and bookmark syncing for safari and with iOS 4.2 on the iPad in November, it will sync notes as well...