You can try it out - just find an open SMTP relay on the internet. Judging by all the spam in my INBOX it shouldn't bet hard. ;)

As for your second question, permit me to answer it with a question: which is easier, a) using a simple module you already understand in 10 lines of code or b) using a new module with some fancy features in 5 lines of code? I chose a) in CGI::Application::MailPage after much frustration trying to get b) to work reliably. Maybe in a perfect world where all modules are as well written as Net::SMTP b) would be the best choice, but I don't live in that world and neither do you!

-sam