The new New Microsoft Office Outlook Connector is availabe for free download after 2 betas. The version is complete and stable according to the outlook blog.

With this new release, the connector has been improved so that syncing your contacts and email is “faster and more robust,” says Alessio Roic, Outlook Program Manager, on their team blog.

This is the part of the realease statment from the team blog:

As part of the 12.1 release, we have also made improvements to the e-mail and contacts synchronization that make this version of the connector faster and more robust. Thank you to everyone who contacted us and gave us feedback and suggestions during the beta period of the release.

What is Windows Live Calendar and how does it interface with Outlook?

For those who are new to the Windows Live Calendar, it features a fast and functional Ajax user interface that provides a rich experience on the web (visit http://calendar.live.com and check it out for yourself). It also supports some great new features that make the experience in Outlook even better. For example, you can have multiple calendars on Windows Live Calendar and each of them will synchronize to Outlook with the Outlook Connector 12.1. Windows Live Calendar supports calendar sharing as well. Shared calendars to which you have access will also synchronize with Outlook.

Here is the download and installation instruction