Lifehacker has a new step-by-step guide up for setting up push email using the new iPhone 2.0 software for free. Using a workaround for MobileMe, you can now avoid manually synching up your devices or pulling updates. Pushing updates and emails directly to your phone allows for the synching of contacts and calendars without the phone having to check in with your server.

By using the free Microsoft Exchange service Mail2Web, you can pick and choose which features you want to have synched up. Naturally, you’re going to want to keep your email address you already have, but by setting up a simple forward, you’ll have an email notifier.

Mac based synching with Address Book is a simple procedure. Using iSynch will communicate with Mail2Web, which then pushes info to your iPhone. If you use iCal things are a bit tougher as it doesn’t support Exchange synch. However, calendar push does work with Mail2Web calendar.

For details (including setup in Microsoft Outlook) click here.