Bitcoin Forum

I've been trying to get into Bitcoin for the past few days; I attempted to setup mining apps and programs on my laptop, but they're really difficult to use and I've been told that it's now impossible to mine on a laptop as mining is pretty much dominated by huge, commercial-grade operations now. I've given up on attempting to mine now.

I setup a Wallet at blockchain.info, but I've been reading on here a lot of stories about people having difficulty or even outright scammed with online services (BTCe scamming people, people not being able to withdraw funds from mtgox, people getting their computers hacked and Bitcoin stolen, etc).

I'm really scared of online services now. I've been told I should get a dedicated offline computer to store Bitcoin, but in all honesty, I really not ready to delve too deeply into this yet. I just want to invest in a few mBTC at this stage (not a lot, just less than $100 USD worth) so buying a new computer to store less mBTC than the computer's worth is counter-intuitive.

I really don't know too much about computers or security; I've read here about people using "Tor" and "Apache" and "Encryption" and it's all alien to me. 

I have a fairly new Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 1.8 GHz Intel Celeron Processor running Windows 8. That's all I know about it; I have no idea how to monitor my computer's online security. Can I store my Wallet and Bitcoin on a regular, old 2.0 GB USB drive? Maybe only plug it in when my computer's disconnected from the internet? Would that be a good idea?