somewhat OT: sendmail

[peter]

i'm running my YDL machine on my home LAN. i want to set up my machine 
so that i can send mail from the command line (/bin/mail) or another 
program such as mutt. i don't care about incoming mail. actually, i'd 
prefer to not allow that. i've had problems with sendmail in the past 
(i.e. i got hacked one via a shoddy sendmail configuration), so i'd 
prefer to use something simpler and less prone to be screwed up by my 
ignorance.

i've found sSMTP as one option, though if i can get something that 
doesn't rely on an external SMTP relay without getting too complex, 
that'd be preferable.

what packages should i be considering for this?

thanks,
peter