Is your wallet synchronized with the blockchain? It does not matter if it is not. But basically you have 2 keys: public to receive bitcoins and private to send them. So, you just need to save the private key for yourself and give the public one to receive your bitcoins. You can generate paper wallets like that easily.
Now, with your wallet, you can save it on an other drive (USB, ...), or you can just export the private key with some software and then, if you lose it, you just have to import your private somewhere else
Thanks, and I think I understand.
The wallet program is called "Qt". I am pretty sure it synchronised. At least it goes through the synching process every time I open the software, and the more frequently I open it, the less time it takes to start showing green. Still seems like it takes an awful long time to "verify block data integrity". Everything about bitcoin seems very time consuming thus far.
Is a "key" the same as an address? That's the word my software uses. When I click "receive coins", it gives me a long string of characters (the "address") to give to the sender.
Should I just give campbx an address to send the coins to myself?
When I click "send coins", I don't see a string of characters -- no address and no key.
Thanks