If you bought the n900 for email the you bought the wrong phone...sorry

The n900 give you power and freedom, it is for the hacker, the power user, the sort of user who wants freedom, it gives you the freedom of root priv, ssh etc, you can hack the n900 to do anything

Dont blame the phone if you bought the wrong device......

If you want email then you have not done your homework, go buy an iphone or android and stop whining.

I usually check my mail via pop3 in the terminal, simples really, try doing this on the iphone !! you can't apples give you no freedom !!!

First I open a terminal
Then telnet port 110 into mail server ip or fqdn of server
enter user <username>
then pass <password>

then its quite easy

list shows mbox items
then to read an email simply enter retr <msg no>
you can delete spam/old messages with dele <msg no>
and dont forget the quit command to cleanly close the session.