>The MailX control from Mabry supports ESMTP, which has authentication. You

Thanks. Of course my client wants to keep it all "cheap" (somehow me spending 3 hours is cheaper than buying something, but whatever..)

I contacted the author of blat.dll -- and he had just created a new dll that supports smtp-auth methods.. I tested it and it works great. very nice work.
I then wrote a wrapper class for it becuase I found the syntax a bit hard to "remember" ... all is good.

Thanks -- I've used marby controls in the past & they're good.

Cheers
-josh