Best Blog for Joomla

I would like to put a blog on a Joomla site that has the functionality of people being able to post comments as well as be notified by email when a new blog post has been posted.

It seems that Joomla itself can be set up as a blog, but no good comments, unless you plug in something like Jcomments, but does it allow for email notifications?  It says so on the Joomla extensions page, but not on the website.

I know about corePHP for Wordpress extension, but that may be a lot more work than is needed.

I want like the first 2 posts of the blog to be posted on the home page and then click to read the whole post, but the client wants it so that it is all seamless and you don't leave the Joomla site.

So I need a:
Blog
With commenting
Email notification of new posts to those who sign up

Please tell me the best solution.

Thanks very much.