Since you're rocking Android already it should be trivial;
Set you phone to sync up with a Google account, that's all your contacts backed up.
As you mentioned you have easy USB drag and drop for media files like pictures so that the tangibles safe.
Finally I have a free app, SMS Backup & Restore (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&hl...) which dumps the SMS database out as an XML file on your memory card so again, its easy drag and drop backup.
There is also SMS Backup+ which backs them up to your Google account and stores them as mail threads which is cool (but I have a massive SMS inbox (10k~ messages) and it's too slow for that, but free!).
I would recommend if you have rooted your device (I did, but having just received my phone back from sending it away for repairs, those buggers re-flashed it and restored it to S-ON!) I would recommend Titanium Backup. It backs up apps and settings and all sorts of stuff to your memory card, and again, free!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup&featu...
HTH.
P.s. Sorry Steve!