[Edit: upon actually reading the thread, it appears lostcausnjtown actually just suggested the same thing
]
If you're OK losing your text messages, just copy (or move) pim.vol from the root of your device to your storage card. It contains contacts, calendar events, etc. When you want it all back, just copy the file back off your storage card to the root of your device. No computers, no 3rd party software...just an on-device file explorer.
Another option (again, without backing up texts) is to sync OTA with an exchange service such as Mail2Web.