I was able to get my phone to work with thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (20071031).  I initially had some problems with an earlier version (2.0.0.4 I think).  Issues with this earlier thunderbird verion were that after the initial connect, subsequent connects would timeout trying to contact the phone.  The sync worked first time with 2.0.0.9.

I thought that I was going to need to write a sync as my only option to avoid using outlook -- glad I tried again.  Thanks.