What's odd is that ONLY the contacts were lost. EVERYTHING else stayed the same after doing the SPB backup thing. Here's my steps and observations so far:
Installed AS (it appears that MyMobiler must have AS to establish the link).
Connected dead-screen 6700 to PC and AS did it's thing and tried to open Novell Groupwise (it's what my work uses for email etc.) I must have once upon a time had GW on this PC and forgot about it and must have used control panel to remove it instead of the GW installer, so enough remnants remained for Active Sync to try to access it for Syncing contacts. I had to cancel out since the application was not actually there. With AS expecting to put the contacts somewhere and not having a place to put them....hmmm...I dunno; maybe that was the hiccup that caused me to lose contacts.
Next I installed MyMobiler and that thing is kinda cool. A re-read of the install instructions mention the need for Active Sync. [I have since uninstalled AS and MyMobiler cannot connect]
Next SPB and it worked great. I backed up the broken 6700, backed up the good 6700, then restored old onto new. I chose to "force" a ROM upgrade and that appears to have been a bad choice (no clue why but phone wasn't acting right). Restored the "good" backup to the good machine again (forced ROM upgrade to hopefully get it back to where it was), then restore old to new again, this time [hopefully] choosing the correct settings to avoid the ROM upgrade. All seems to be well but, alas, no contacts saved (the number one thing I wanted to save). Home screen, alarms, game high scores, email settings, wifi networks...it's all there.
So now I'm through with AS and Outlook and all that. I uninstalled AS and MyMobiler quit connecting (that's how I know it needs AS, plus the install text). SPB also quit. Tried an uninstall (control panel), registry clean on the PC, and reinstall, but SPB doesn't want to fully install or function. SPB is still on both 6700s and the backup files are saved on my 2gig card, so I'm good-to-go for a future backup and restore within the 15 day trial.
So anyone else going through this, if you already use AS (or similar), try MyMoblier first. If it will work with your nonAS manager and you can get your information backed up, you should be good to go with SPB for a full backup of the dead PPC and restore to the new PPC. Take care on the ROM option.
http://www.mymobiler.com/
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/backup/
Hope this helps someone.