Mine works fine on my computer at home running PHP4 and Omni under windows. Make sure you set the server in your php.ini file. What kind of problems are you getting? It might not be related to php at all.
One problem I had is my hosting company gave me access to their smtp server. I dialed up through mindspring. I could never use my hosting companies smtp server, only mindspring. So i continually emailed my hosting co and complained that their server didn't work. Turns out it was some filtering at Mindspring that didn't allow me to connect...
It's not always obvious what's causing the problem...
---John Holmes