Can't modify php.ini - other ways of getting email to work?

[E2E]

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I feel silly now as I'd seen that How-To tip before I'd posted but somehow in all my newbie glory hadn't -really- made the connection between it and my problem...d'oh! But now that I have tried it I'm still getting an error message within the diagnostic tool -- specifically it tells me the following:

Pertinent PHP Settings
SMTP: localhost
sendmail_from: None
sendmail_path: None

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '@', expecting ',' or ';' in \\[site path]\includes\mail.php on line 96

Line 96 is the one in which we'd specified var $smtpUser -- specifically we'd set it to the email address from which we want emails to be sent (so that it now reads var $smtpUser = forums@edtropolis.com; ), was that incorrect? In that original How To post you'd linked me to the only potential clue I thought I saw was the comment about making sure one creates an smtp account -- is this my problem, is there some specific other type of account I need to create in order for this to work?

Thanks yet again for the help with this, I swear I won't -always- be quite such a noob...I hope... =)