geting started mining.

[plummonkey]

i have a mac laptop that I dont use much, and I dont pay for power. what is the best bet for mining?

[avegetable]

You should say what model it is, but in any case, I assume that mining with any laptop now is going to be almost pointless because you will make so little. Even if you're not paying for the power you're wasting, you're still putting a lot of extra stress on the laptop that could shorten its life (thru excess heat mainly). I don't have any real experience mining though...

[mitty]

Edit: guy above me got to it first. :p

It's not worth it to start GPU mining now, especially on a laptop.  The amount of wear you'll put on your laptop from the heat and having the fan run at 100% isn't worth the minor amount of BTC you'll make.  GPU mining on a regular computer might make you a decent profit depending on the card, assuming you already have the hardware.

ASICs are slowly coming out, pushing GPUs out of the game.  Your best bet would be to pre-order an ASIC and wait for it to come in (if you pre-order BFL you'll probably get it around June or later) or to buy FPGA miners right now that can later be traded in as credit towards an ASIC.  (BFL Singles, Icarus and Lancelot Boards)

With that said, I'm still running a GPU machine but only because I've had the cards for a few months and it's hosted in a location with free power. :p

To answer your original question; mining on a laptop isn't worth it.

[Rarrikins]

If you don't mind the laptop degrading due to heat, you can get cgminer working on MacOS X. I'd recommend enabling CPU mining (if it's just going to be sitting in a corner) by changing the configure line in the instructions to:

Code:

./configure --enable-scrypt --enable-cpumining

You might also want to have it start when your system boots.

You can then try it out for a bit and see whether it's worth it to let it continue.

[toni_iommi]

Waste of time. You will take weeks months to reach the send threshold of any pool. Solo mining you will never get a solved block meaning 0 bitcoins ever. Far better off watching some hippie offering "free bitcoins" for watching youtube videos. Assuming you just want a few fractions of bitcoin in your wallet.

[mjc]

Heres some information I put together on my blog about mining: http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/btc-mining-considerations/

[Fiyasko]

Goahead, make it catchfire
 
Seriously though, it has extremely high odds of "blowing out"

[plummonkey]

thanks for all the info, its helpful.