I've just bought a new MacBook Air

I'm going to buy for sure word, excel and powerpoint for Mac.

I'm considering how worthy is Outlook for Mac, because the price difference is quite important, so before buying it I'd like to be sure that:

1. for contacts: I'll be able to synch the existing contacts on my iPhone with Outlook contacts

2. for calendars: I'll be able to synch the existing calendars on my iPhone with Outlook calendars

2. for mail: I'll be able to configure my Hotmail account on outlook and it will be in synch with the hotmail account I've configured on my iPhone

my iPhone is still 3GS (so no iCloud) and I do not think I'm going to change it soon.

But I'd like to understand also what's happening in the future if I buy a new iPhone.

I read many different things on this community, not always aligned with the latest version of iTunes for example, ot talking about Apple desupporting Synch Services with OS X Mountain Lion,...

so I'd really appreciate a clarification about limitations of synch features in outlook mac

thanks a lot for your help

Davide