Mail 3.0 major problems

I loved Mail 2.0, I really did. It made switching from Office after so many years not as painful as it could have been.
But now when I try send mail from any of my 4 accounts (1 Gmail 1 .Mac) it ALWAYS times out asking to select a stmp server. NO settings have been changed. At all. But if I send mail from my iPhone on these identical accounts, and from Gmail and .Mac websites it works. This is SO annoying as I email a lot and hate doing it from the iPhone!
Any ideas?

I know this sounds trivial, but have you verified the settings?

Yep, completely. Its so strange and nothings changed with Easy Space to change the settings.