And thank you, to every one, for correcting my wrongness.

* ssh is not a virtual private network, ssh works fine, except I need to hit some services via a VPN thanks to my employer.
* I don't know what happened but the openvpn config widget is blank after i tried to install the openconnect-gui.
* openvpn fix: add OPTARGS="--script-security 2" to /etc/defaults/openvpn if using the /etc/openvpn/maemo-update-resolvconf script to add the vpn's DNS servers.
* The email delete, I missed that one. I'm totally wrong there.
* The battery issue appears to be better, I'm not sure what changed what I saw earlier.
* I don't use gmail, so uploading .vcards and .icals to gmail, is not a solution for me, but if that's what it takes to sync this phone with the outside world....
* Yes Pidgin works, but it does not have the same integration with notifications as the core.
* Mail for Exchange is kinda a deal breaker.

I really want to like this device. Right now I don't. And I'm frustrated. And my post was not constructive, because I've been up all night trying to get some very basic stuff working. And I should have done more research before I bought and posted here.

I've downloaded the SDK, maybe I can fix some of these issues... and shut my big mouth.