I've been in IT for quite a few years myself. If you're always learning/experimenting, you're always a newbie! But the newbieness maybe doesn't last as long as it once did. Unlike dreward, though, I've just started mining over the last few weeks. Always a blast learning new things. Not here to get filthy rich overnight, just learning and having fun, and if i squeak a little profit out of it that's cool too.

Up to 240 KH/s, CPU QRK.

Around 14 KH/s CPU scrypt

Yep, I know, different algorithms. I was surprised it was that different, but so it goes. Might be a difference in the way the pools work too?

My wife's computer is newer, bigger, faster and she can CPU mine at about 4x my rates.

This weekend, trying to set up GPU scrypt mining on and old laptop, just as a prototype to learn how it's done, before spending money on a GPU scrypt rig.

I also don't think it's likely that Bitcoin will completely replace fiat currency - especially if it's assumed that BTC alone will replace fiat currency.

There is a big paradigm shift going on here. So only time will tell what adaptations and innovations people will make in the face of that. But BTC itself is only the first (and yes, so far biggest) element of that shift. It may be just as likely that a diversity of characteristics found in several cryptocurrencies makes for a robust cryptocurrency ecosystem that at least rivals if not replacing the system based on fiat money. Projecting from the current state, which may be only the initial inflection of a radical shift, is just guesswork, though. We'll have to wait and see.

Well said MysteryMan!

We've got a small ASIC rig doing bitcoin, and several PCs doing, at various times, LTC, QRK and DOGE. The BTC stuff we make all stern and serious faces about. The rest is just a blast. Wife and I haven't had this much fun learning new stuff in a long time.

Life's too short! Mine something for fun!

It looks like most of the alt coins track bitcoin, broadly speaking. One might wonder if any of the altcoins are designed to be more adoptable as currency than bitcoin (anybody old enough to remember betamax vs VHS will know what I'm talking about here) and would have a chance of passing up bitcoin in adoption over the long run. I really think it's way too early to tell, and that would make them unsafe (among other reasons that they might be).

That said, any kind of investment is a risk vs. reward proposition. You're not going to see big appreciation without big risk. People who want to be safe buy treasuries.

Watch enough blogs, news op-eds, etc. etc. (and yes, forums) and you'll hear that bitcoin is also a shitcoin in a lot of people's opinion. I don't pay a lot of attention to the debate because it's all unfounded opinion at this point - around 7 or 8 billion people in the world and they all have opinions about something, so they're pretty cheap.

I have an old latptop that's not doing anything else that I would like to use for mining altcoins (doge is one I have in mind). It's an Acer 5534 with the HD 3200 (RS 780) chip, and it has Xubuntu 12.04 installed. Has anyone successefully set this GPU up for mining?

I've current'y got it digging doge coins with pooler-cpuminer, but the hash rate is, as expected, really low.

Thanks in advance
[zs]