Serious problems of late syncing... never had any issues until now

Question

Updated all the latest software a few days ago. I am away from home on business, in a hotel room, and the way I keep my phone charged is plugged into my MBP overnight. It always works at home. Yes the MBP is plugged in. I wake up to find my iPhone at 20% power.
I unplug and plug it back it, it starts the sync, then my iPhone goes away (on the left side of iTunes) and the phone says "Sync in progress" but there is not syncing going on in iTunes, and the iPhone is no longer down the left hand side. I cancel sync on the iPhone, try again, same thing.
So I go to restore. It locks up the restore, while the iPhone says "RESTORING", iTunes stops and kicks the phone out of iTunes like during the sync.
I went through the steps to force the restore (holding home while plugging it in) and it wiped it fine, then I had a very difficult time getting it to backup the iPhone with an older backup. It overwrote my latest backup with a backup of no data, but I had one from September that was OK. Each time it tried to backup, same thing would happen, and phone would say "RESTORING" but iTunes would kick it out.
Tried restarting the computer, creating a new profile on the MBP, etc. What finally did it was just continually trying to force the backup, it finally kept the phone syncing and restored it properly.
Now when I got to plug 'er in to the MBP, it sees the phone, starts the sync, and then again kicks the phone out of iTunes and leaves "SYNC IN PROGRESS" on the iPhone. And of course it stops the charge process.
So *** did Apple do to iOS 4.2.1 or the new iTunes 10.1 (54) that totally botched the syncing process up?
For information, I have had this phone since January and have never had a single problem with it other then it locking up once a month after I got it and never since. It is an awesome phone, but this sync issue is beyond frustrating. The phone was not dropped, damaged or anything, and it has a hard case on it. Further, I had two different USB iPhone connectors that all do the same thing, in both USB ports on my MBP.
Thanks for any insight, hopefully Apple reads this. I am relatively computer savvy so I do not think this is OE.
Matt

Answer 1

Yes the MBP is plugged in. I wake up to find my iPhone at 20% power.
Is your MBP set to sleep automatically after a period of inactivity when connected to a power source?
So * did Apple do to iOS 4.2.1 or the new iTunes 10.1 (54) that totally botched the syncing process up?
Not sure. The syncing process has not been totally botched up or botched up in any way with my MBP and iPhone running the current iTunes version and iOS 4.2.1.
If the same occurs with a new computer login account and there is no change after downloading and re-installing the current iTunes version over the existing, there may be a problem with your iPhone.