Yeh I don't rush games, rushing is fasttrack to boredom.
I've never personally had sam tell me I have email when I didn't. So no experience of the bug, but I'd hazard a guess that those that are, aren't archiving emails and that sam is probably telling you you have email, when it's actually a read email. But as said..never actually had this bug.
I also spend as little time on the tempest as possible, don't really talk to people until I have to. The temp notifications are seriously annoying tho. As for mods.. that's something you get after the original game gets boring, to extend replayability, not usually something you get to make the original more playable. That's what the devs are supposed to do.
Overall it doesn't really bother me, I'm old enough now that I've perfected the ability to ignore people, so continually whining kids, wives, parents, friends, computer ai's.. just don't listen to them.
You just tune them out. My point tho, is that this sam notification is something that happens what? When you goto the navigation station? So once or twice.. per occasion on the ship. But on the planets you're being notified 3-4 times per minute as the game continually updates your current position relative to whatever life threatening situation you're in. Be that Radiation, Heat, Cold..