Exchange support in iPhone is garbage

So I caved in and bought my daughter an iPhone for the New Year. Today most of my time was spent trying to get it to work (i. e. send and receive email). There are plenty of instructions on the net on how to do it. The problem is, none of them work.

For example, there's this:
http://blog.monkeykit.com/2007/08/31/how-to-setup-imap4-exchange-2003-email-to-sync-with-your-iphone/
and this:
http://www.azaleos.com/blog/index.php?q=node/43
and this:
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=324544
and finally this:
http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2004_10_01_archive.html

I was able to get an Outlook Express to send and receive mail using every one of these instructions. But none of them actually worked for the iPhone.

When I first got my Windows Mobile, it just worked, with minimal configuration, out the box. I guess despite all its media glory, the iPhone is not a smart phone yet.