Yes, after a few days' messing about I agree with your assessment.
The email issue was done by installing Altamail which has an easy bulk selection feature.
Itunes does odd things. I managed to move it from one winXP machine to another winXP machine, by copying over all its workspace (found in several places under Documents and Settings) but then the new install still realises it is on a different PC (once the Iphone is connected to it) and asks for a re-authorisation with the Apple shop, saying you can do this a max of 5 times.
My girlfriend's PC is Win7 and that keeps the Itunes stuff in a different place, so I have thus far avoided installing Itunes on it, because I don't want to risk the deletion of the installed apps.
Itunes also tries to sync bookmarks with IE (which I don't use, but have an old install with hundreds of bookmarks) and email accounts with Outlook Express (which I also don't use, except for send-to links). I have not yet found where this is disabled.
It is in any case possible to do what she needs, without Itunes. One can transfer photos
from the Iphone, using Explorer (the phone appears as a folder under XP, or as a "DCIM" digital camera under win7). One could presumably also put pics
on the phone in that way. I have not yet found a way to send audio to the phone but googling suggests various ways.
There are also Itunes replacements -
example
No wonder people jailbreak these things. Then you see the whole file system.
I am still interested in what people do when they go abroad, and up using roaming data (a big chunk of Iphone functionality relies on a constant use of internet data) but now they are without the huge UK "free" allowances.
Even if you bought an EU data bundle, all you need to do is pop over to say Croatia and downloading a few google maps will hit you with £10-£100.
There are also other solutions I have found.
Copytrans, mentioned above, in its free version, transfers songs
to the Iphone. Simple drag/drop from a PC. The free version watermarks any images transferred
from the Iphone to the PC but you can do that operation with Explorer. So that covers most requirements, without using Itunes at all.
The remaining curiosity is that much of the Iphone "slick" functionality is tied to "unlimited" GPRS/3G data (or a WIFI connection). No way to config email to download just say the first 10k of each email. For most non heavy business users, this can work out hugely expensive if going abroad. I wonder how many people get caught out by this.