I'm trying two things,

1 a simple email form where the user who wants to sign up for a mailing list fills out the form and the information gets sent to an email address of mine.

2 an e-card service, the user chooses from four designs that gets sent to an email address that they choose, (I have a rough idea of how to do this but need some help, and would find it a bonus if there was a pre-made script to work with)

What is a good email account to have the first idea sent to (i've tried hotmail and yahoo) and should I use the mail() function or phpmailer, I think I need an SMTP server for this and can't use my webhosers, because I use the freehosting service which turns SMTP off, (I heard something about gmail being possible).

I'm sorry if none of this is clear, but I'm fairly new to PHP

Well, firstly move off the free host and enjoy more freedom (It can cost like $1 a year on some hosts for a cpanel account).

From what I can gather PHPMailer is a library, so it may still use the mail() function anyway. For efficiency I would use mail(), just make sure you add all the correct headers and what have you, then you should be fine

Also, take a look at:
http://uk.php.net/manual/en/book.imap.php It's the php manual for IMAP, POP3 and NNTP, so i should have some useful functions.

At the risk of sounding cheap, (it's a tight few months) could I use someone elses SMTP who has a proper paid account, or use gmail with phpmailer?

I haven't tried mailing from this site, but I know a few people who've used it for a free php host. It's My-Place.us and here's a link to their free account specifics. If you notice, PHP sendmail is enabled so this should solve your problem with finding a free SMTP. Hope this helps =)

Thank you i shall try that do they place banner adds?

I don't remember, honestly, but I don't think they do. I could be wrong of course xD