Great thank you, that really helps, with trying to get my head around it. Just quitting caffeine so I'm a bit slow.
Take a look at localbitcoins.com
I am in Aus and haven't found an exchange where it's easy to transfer cash yet. I had a quick look at localbitcoins, will check it out again. I was under the impression you had to meet people in person for that one. Maybe that was a while back. (When I should have bought).
How long would it take for someone to hack my computer and pinch my wallet.dat? I am using an old laptop, basically a glorified dvd player, to hold my wallet. If I only hook it to the net to check my balance and generate a couple of addresses, is it pretty safe? (aside from the need for backups.)
Any time you are connected to "the net" there is potential that malware on your computer could steal your bitcoins (or potential that a hacker could exploit a weakness in your security.
I'm not well versed in linux but I can run mplayer from the command so I am going to try the live ubuntu. The wallet application to be installed, can be popped onto the same offline usb stick that holds the live ubuntu, no? Or do you have to go online to grab it. Or is it possible to access your hard drive, as like a mapped drive, from the bootable usb?
I think the idea is to keep it completely offline. The private key is generated after you install the software that you intend to use to generate the private key.
That's a really good idea, keeping it totally offline. Then as you use addresses from it, you just copy them into a text file, onto a stick, to be used online, without the wallet.dat ever seeing the light of fibre, no?
Depending on the wallet (or wallets) that you use, it may be possible to make inferences about other addresses that you are likely to control as well.
Could this be used by say your flatmate, if he had one address, to work out a possible larger balance, and decide it was worth it to go through your things or pinch your laptop? Or is it something for the pure maths grads to work out?
