email questions

[Scott Frankel]

I'm looking for a way to send a simple, plain text email message  
using Python.  My initial attempts are failing with the following error:

	socket.error: (61, 'Connection refused')

Does this imply that I do not have the machine's smtp server  
running?  (I don't; and I'd like to avoid setting it up.)

I'm following example code in the lib ref docs:

 >>> s = smtplib.SMTP()
 >>> s.connect()
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
   File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/ 
python2.4/smtplib.py", line 303, in connect
     raise socket.error, msg
socket.error: (61, 'Connection refused')


Python 2.4.1
MacOSX 10.4.3


Is there a better/easier way to send a plain text message?

Thanks in advance!
Scott