Be Excellent To Each Other

I work part time for a company that really needs to rely on more than word of mouth from now on, given the economic apocalypse. One of the things I think that would benefit them is a proper email newsletter, but I've not needed to set one of these up before, and I'm wondering what the best way to go about it is. I assume from the amount of companies that must need such a thing that there are some straightforward ways to set up and run one, but so far I've only found one site that has anything promising, and even that seems like a bit of a faff.

It'd be a probably somewhat infrequent newsletter, sent to perhaps a few hundred at most. We have a new website at long pissing last (though I don't have direct control over it, so sorting out any sub-up page would probably take around 300 times as long as it should), so I figure now's a good time to start drawing attention to it, as the last one was such an embarassment I felt that linking to it was just a waste of time.

What would you fine folk recommend?

Constant Contact are good, or alternatively I can set up an account on my e-mail marketing system (all written by myself) for only £145 a year. If you want more details, PM me.

//edit: It's a web-based system as well so can be used on any computer.

I've only really used PHPList if you fancy a rough & ready, but free way of doing it. If it's only smaller numbers, you could always fire it off from your email client and BCC the recipients instead.

Colour me interested as well. Something cheap (free - Ed), simple and easy to use. Windows is fine but a Mac version would give me a warm glow inside as if I'd just wet myself.

WHITE WEEWEE! WHITE WEEWEE!

Do you mind Sir! I only reserve that for Amstrad hardware or a really good CPC game that I've never played before.

MailChimp are reasonably cheap and hyper-good at this sort of thing. They are the emailing company on the Internet, apparently. Free trial, etc.
http://www.mailchimp.com/
If I didn't do all our emailing in-house (20 million so far this year, folks, who wants to punch me?) that's who I'd use.

I like Dear Deirdre.