Notify vs. Notifications & Messaging

What are your thoughts on these modules. Do they conflict? Is Notify needed to run Notifications?

I've been able to get Notify to work correctly on my site, but still can't seem to get Notifications to send any mail. I've installed the phpmailer module and package, but it won't mail. I'm using phpmailer 2.1 instead of 2.0 like it wanted, because 2.0 doesn't seem to be available.

Why do you use Notify or Notifications on your site and what do you think?