I also can't get my SMTP (win2k) working with Python.
But... funnily this works fine:
import smtplib
s = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.mail.ru')
s.sendmail('no_such_address at mail.ru', 'jonhe... at gmail.com', 'hi
there!')
s.quit()
Why do they (mail.ru) allow outsiders to use their service???