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Given Scott's explanation, I don't quite understand why gethost... xxx.xxx fails, but gethost... mail.xxx.xxx succeeds - but perhaps I shouldn't worry.
An A record is an "address record". Its the record that specifies the IP address that's associated with a domain name.
When that A record doesn't exist, (or when e-mail software tries to connect to port 25 on that address, and doesn't have an SMTP server running) then there has to be a different host that handles e-mail for the domain name.
This different host is called a "mail exchanger". You look up the mail exchanger for a given domain name by looking up the MX records. There can be more than one MX record if there's more than one SMTP server that accepts mail for the domain. (This can also provide redundancy in case there's a problem.)
It's very common for people to name their mail exchangers starting with the word "mail". Why? Because it's a logical name to use. Just as people often name their ftp servers "ftp.foo.com" and their web servers "www.foo.com". It's just a logical thing to do.
However, it's certainly not required. I can call my mail server mail.scottklement.com, or smtp.scottklement.com or mail1.scottklement.com or mail2.scottklement.com... all logical names... or I can call it "stinky.scottklement.com" or some other name that's not so logical. The fact that many people use "mail.xxx.com" doesn't mean that it's okay to assume that all mail servers will be called mail.whatever.com
Furthermore, I might not even be handling my own e-mail. I might decide to have my ISP take care of scottklement.com for me.... so if my ISP is TDS Metrocom, the mail exchangers might be mail1.tds.net, mail2.tds.net... and they have nothing to do with my domain at all.
So the question is, how do you find out what the mail exchangers are called? The answer is: you look up the MX records.
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