Storm now thinking Droid ?'s

[w-r-g]

I have a Storm now and am thinking of moving over to a Droid. I have a couple ?'s. I am just now starting to read up on the Droid and really like what I read. I keep reading about gmail and contacts. I have a pop3 account for my main email that I will need to access which I see I can do very easily, but what does gmail have to do with saving your contacts? I want to sync with Outlook , so is that possible with the Droid or is there a conversion process involved?

I go out of the country quite a bit and I plan on keeping the Storm and just switching over to the Storm when I go out of the country. Is that a feasable plan or what is the process of changing from the Droid over the Storm and vice vesa?

Thanks