Unable to send from mail.app

Hi all,

This seems to be a bit of a complex situation. I had a mobileme account, and I also had an old mac.com account which had lapse but which I kept using as my Apple ID for here, for purchases etc. When the time came to make a decision about icloud, I moved my mobileme account over and that was all good.

However, in the interim I decided that I did not want to have separate icloud accounts for both mail and itunes purchases etc. So what I did was set up the mac.com ID as the main iCloud ID, and then set up mail under that, with me.com addresses. So far, its all going well. Here's the process

*@mac.com as login and apple ID

*@me.com as the main email --> *@me.com as an alias.

However, I am unable to send from mail.app with either of the me.com addresses. I can use the web just fine, icloud on the web doesnt care that I have an apple ID that can't send mail. But, mail.app seems to care a lot, because it simply will not connect to the smtp server that get set up when I set up the emails. I can collect mail just fine, but cannot send.

I don't understand this. I can't use the mac.com address in anything to do with mail and nor should I have to, its not that address that I *want* to use for email, its just an appleID and login ID. Thats all.

Anyone got any suggestions at all about what to do (apart from "just use the web client" which is what I am doing at the moment) I want to keep it all together but this is defeating me, completely.