Step-by-Step Migration from Outlook to Google Apps Gmail

I have been wanting/trying to move from Outlook 2007 to a web-based platform for almost a year now. I will admit that I am a top-down hierarchical guy and over the years, I have neatly filed my emails into individual folders. Secondly, I am a "power-user" as I've heard told many times, in that I have many email addresses and domains.

This is my current email list:
name1@domain1.com
name2@domain1.com
name3@domain1.com
name4@domain1.com
name5@domain1.com
name1@domain2.com
name2@domain2.com
name1@domain3.com
name1@gmail.com

As you can see, this is 9 email addresses at 4 different domains. The reason for this is because of my various business interests as well as personal email addresses.

On a single desktop (or laptop) computer, outlooks handles this fantastically. All I do is set up each email address and they are all pulled into my inbox at one place where I can check them all. Further, because I am a neat-freak and pull off all my attachments, my mailbox size for the past 6 years is less than 1Gb, ,which fits easily into Outlooks "2Gb limit mailbox size"

The problem - the very-serious-damn-I-hate-this-problem however is two-fold:

#1 - I am tied to ONE computer:
Yes, I can access webmail, and yes I can copy/paste my Outlook mailbox from one computer to another, but at the end of the day, this folder does NOT synchronize to any other folders on any other computers. Even emails I send fromo webmail do not show up in my sent list on Outlook - and I hate that.

I use Live Mesh for other folders and it has been a lifesaver to make me more mobile with my data, but my EMAIL keeps me on this damn laptop, while I have a more powerful, dual-monitor desktop PC that I prefer to use when I'm not on the road.

#2 - No updated folder info:
Even if I do have two copies of my mailbox (online or two PCs) - any changes I make (delete, file, forward, etc.) do no appear on my other PC.

I have looked into PSTSync programs, Hosted Exchange and many other options, but ultimately, all the "Hosted Exchange" options wanted a monthly subscription of at least $4/account/month and one glance at my list said that I needed at least 9 x this so $36/month. I am not against paying $5/month, and would have done so gladly, but not for 9 accounts. So I had to keep looking.

What I found to be my robust solution was in Google Apps. When I get around to it, I'll explain how I did it, but I gotta go get some real work done today.