Ask HN: Are there any email services as good as Gmail but not as intrusive?

I have several separate facets of my life, that I really don't like to have them intrude on each other. And, the release of Buzz has caused an unwelcome convergence of those parts of my life, and it's fueled my privacy paranoia. Yes, I can and have turned Buzz off. But, it's dialed up a long simmering desire to distance myself from Google's products for the sake of privacy. The problem is, their email and calendaring services are so damn good, and they work so well on my Android phone. Are there any other privacy friendly, really good email and calendaring products that people are using? I'd be willing to use another hosted solution if it was good.