LONG POST, PUSH, Notifications, etc.

[Suz416]

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with my Diamond for several reasons, so I hope some patient soul will help me figure this stuff out. I have read 900 pages of message boards, I've googled, I've searched forums, I've read until I'm blue in the face, and there are just some things I can't understand. Someone already told me to keep my posts short, but I have so many questions and things I don't UNDERSTAND that I have to ask a million questions. I have 4 pages of handwritten notes, and 2 pages in Word of notes about how to do this, and that so PLEASE BE KIND....

PUSH EMAIL OF ANY SORT: Ok, I have mail2web. I get that, I have it working, that's all fine and great, EXCEPT the fact that I can't keep threading in my Gmail account when it forwards, and I respond to mail2web. This is important, I need Gmail's archive.
I've tried:
SEVEN - I loved it, but they are having "issues" with Gmail at present.
HOTMAIL - would be GREAT if it WORKED. I get constant messages that Windows Hotmail cannot send the message, try again later. ANNOYING. Tried the patch to fix, reset, still got error. Then I can't REMOVE the stupid thing without a hard reset.
FlexMail - tried it, can't really remember what I didn't like so I may revisit that.
ImapPusherService: apparently too complicated for me, because I just don't get how it works or what to do with it.
Now I'm wanting to try PUSHEFFECT, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I set my Gmail account to enable POP, then I set up the accounts in PE (2 gmail, 1 fastmail) - and didn't know I was supposed to set up forwarding to mycellphonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com. SO I FIXED THAT, and then I started getting text messages of my mail BUT IT WASN'T IN MY GMAIL BOX. I thought the text messages were supposed to be hidden, and the mail was supposed to show up??! This would be ideal as my text messaging seems to be fairly reliable.

That brings me to another thing: Notifications. Do they NOT work for outlook when outlook is OPEN? What is the point of that?! I still want to know if I'm getting new mail, even if I'm IN THE APPLICATION. (I come from ChatterEmail so if anyone else can relate, PM me with your solution PLEASE!) I installed INBOXTones because I need different tones for each account, and it just works when it wants to, not reliably it seems. Tried: Phone Alarm (settings are very confusing, and I'm really not an idiot, I swear.) and another PocketAlarm maybe? These are profile programs it seems, and it's just too involved to set up simple separate alert tones for each account.

I'm heading to hard reset this thing and start over from the top. I just think I'm not smart enough for my smartphone.