Your friend is incorrect, you can get your yahoo mail just fine with a basic free yahoo account, there is nothing special to do other then adding a new account in email accounts and preferences.
Here is an email overview if you are having difficulties:
http://www.precentral.net/palm-pre-email-overview-video
If you are refering to syncing contacts with synergy then yes this is not available at this time, but as reviews are showing it a feature with pixi it will probably be released as soon as webos1.2 is released which will probably be soon.