Does HTC Sync work well with Thunderbird?
I'd recommend, rather, using Thunderbird as an IMAP client with the Google Contacts and Lightning add-ons ( http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/7307 and http://mozilla.org/projects/calendar). You should be able to manage your contacts and calendar in Thunderbird and sync with Google. So then your Thunderbird and phone will each synchronize to and from Google.