Oh, one more thing: I finally getting comfortable enough with my understanding of the Bitcoin system to start considering building a "real" mining rig, so I started looking at the logistics.

I found a calculator which seems to be quite all-encompassing at https://bitclockers.com/calc .

But unfortunately, I've come away a bit discouraged.

I wasn't aware of the impending mining "award" drop, though I've since read up on it on the wiki. I was going to start off buying a single 7970 and dropping it into a repurposed box that would do the job nicely. However, with the costs of energy ($.09/kwh, it looks like, though I still need to verify it with my service), it looks like I'd be barely breaking even once the reward drops. Is that an experience that's not unusual, or am I missing something? The 7970 is listed there at 350 watts and 600 Mh/s (though most people on here are reporting around 700Mh/s with the 7970, and so is the number I've been using). Is 350 watts correct for that card?

Based on that particular page, it seems I'd be better off (though less scalable for growth) if I got two 6950s instead, since I'd end up with a slightly better hash rate and slightly lower power usage, at around the same cost of entry. But even still, I'd be looking at under 5 dollars a week of profit, and take 2 1/2 years to "break even". It seems odd that there doesn't seem to be a card out there that can give any better return than that.

Can anyone shed a bit of brief guidence on this subject?

Thanks!

Fair enough Though since it's all just JS and HTML, it wouldn't take too much to modify it to run it in any HTML-displaying environment. I don't know if there's any "gadget"-type interface in Gnome or KDE, but if there is, I'm sure it could be adapted easily enough. I just wrote this to stick on, for instance, a work machine to make sure everything is running as it should in my absence...and those usually are Windows machines, still.

Thanks for the welcome though! I haven't heard from Slush, so I'll probably just host it myself on mediafire or something in the next few days and link to it once I'm in the right forum.

Hello, all!

I think I looked into BitCoin about a year ago, but never quite grasped the concept, so it didn't last long. About January I looked at it again (I think they were talking about it on TWiT and I got interested again) and have been mining at 3-9MH/s on Slush's pool, trying things out and researching building a real rig.

I finally signed up because I've developed a Windows 7/Vista Desktop gadget for monitoring miners on Slush's pool that I'd like to share with the community. I've offered it to Slush, and now I'm just tweaking a bit more here and there. So I figured I'd better hurry up and start trying to get my 5 posts out of the way

See you around!

P.S. Yes, I know Windows 8 is coming, reducing the usefulness of a desktop gadget. That is, the gadget still works, but the desktop isn't visible a lot of the time. I've downloaded VS, so maybe sometime I'll take a look at it and see what it would take to make a WinRT app with a live tile displaying similar info.