Travel Technology - Email via GSM Phone Abroad?

I've got a Haier D6000 unlocked GSM phone. A small, B&W, chunky-clunky-sorta display. Planning to travel to France, and I'll buy a France SIM card for it here in the states before I go. I will likely be in out-of-the-way places without the ability to check my email. Question is this:

What would be the best way to access email, preferably a dot-mac address, using the phone? Not necessarily to send, even, but at least to receive. The phone's features include GPRS, and WAP 2.0/xHTML. Specifically, what web address(es) I should use? Or might this be something that apple hasn't caught-up to yet, and I should use my yahoo address instead?

Also...Because of the aforementioned display, might it all be much better if I just plunked down $200 or less on a new phone with newer software and capabilities, and a better display? Thing is, I don't need a camera, and I love how tiny and light the Haier is for travel (63 grams, and a bit bigger than a business card).

Any thoughts anyone has on this would be helpful.

This is what I do and it might work for you.

I use T-Mobile (TMO), Treo 600 that provides email/internet access. My account includes international roaming, etc. so can be used worldwide with any third party that has relationship with TMO.

When I travel abroad, I have 1 or 2 spare gsm world phones - with these, I have either prepaid sim or permanent overseas number. For instance, I have permanent Singapore and Taiwan numbers but use prepaid in China, HK, India and other gsm markets.

I use the Treo with US TMO account only to download emails when abroad and for emergency calls for family as very costly for phone connection. Download of emails is very cheap. And for local calls, use the prepaid overseas accounts.

In your case, if you adopt my method, you would merely buy another phone and install say the French SIM account for local usage and still use your original phone (assuming it can) to download emails, etc.

Caveat is my emails are all pop3 accounts whereas xxx.mac.com is IMAP - so double check it will work. Worse comes to worse, you use webmail via mac.com but then it is very very slow!

Same strategy will also work with Cingular although I 'believe' international usage is more expensive on a per kb basis than TMO.