Contact synchronizing

[jj14x]

Hi! I'm currently an android user and am looking to possibly move to the Windows phone side. I am currently waiting on my Lumia 800 to be delivered, but have a few questions about contact syncing

I currently have my contacts on gmail and android syncs to it as expected. What I miss is the ability to have a local copy in my desktop outlook (non-exchange), so I usually download from gmail once a month and overwrite my outlook contacts (since gmail is almost always up-to-date because of my phone)

Reading about this on microsoft's site, it looks like I can sync up my outlook to my live account (using hotmail connector which I already use).

Question 1 - is this a one time sync (between live acct and desktop outlook)? Or does it sync back and forth if there are changes in either location? (I assume/expect that the WP7 will make sure that the phone and live acct will always be in sync regardless of where I make changes).
In other words, will my phone, live acct and outlook contacts be in perfect sync?

Question 2 - If I have my gmail account set up in WP7 people hub, will it show me duplicate contacts (that I will have to manually link)? Or will it be able to synchronize my contacts between gmail and live as well?

Thanks!