Yes, you can use the forum kind of like your own little hotmail email address. Go to user Menu, and click on Inbox on the menu on the left.

I did test to see if I get the little notification that I got an email, and it doesn't seem to be working. Will have to look into that some.

I am moving the whole site to a new server pretty soon, and the newer version of mySQL on that box may remedy some of these minor bugs. There's also a new release of the forum with some bug fixes coming out soon, so I'll get that on there too.