My 2 cents

[Lem73]

Hi I am new to this forum and wanted to share my impressions about Bitcoin.

I first heard about Bitcoins over a year ago in a blog post and found it interesting. I installed the standard client, got some coin fractions from the faucet and played around with it a bit. Then I read about the technology behind and found it pretty interesting. However I lost it somehow as there was not much to do with the coins. Now I tried it for the second time and want to share my impressions.
First I have to say that it is amazing how much more there is to do with Bitcoins now. Maybe I just didn't find all the great services at that time but it now feels much less like play money and more like a currency.

A huge problem for me is the client software. I first tried the standard client but that started to download the block chain and did not seem to finish that soon so I had plenty of time to try other clients as well.
First to the standard client: It took me one and a half days to download the full block chain. Now I have a bitcoin directory of 4 GB sitting in my home directory and the client takes ages to start and to quit. This alone is enough to make an otherwise good client completely unusable. I think this is a huge issue for new users. They will of course install the standard client and then get frustrated when it loads the block chain. If I didn't know what to expect, I would have quit that client after a few minutes and lost interest in Bitcoins.
Then I tried Electrum, which seems to be a lightweight client. It is a good thing that it does not load the block chain but that also seams to be ac security issue as it only connects to one server. The client does not have so many features and looks a little rough at the edges (I did not find a way back from "Pro mode" to normal mode) so it will not become my favorite. However, I liked the concept of brain wallets.
I tried the MultiBit client and it also looks good except for the show-stopper: It does not encrypt wallets!
The next thing I tried was Armory. It has lots of features but the first one I tried (Printing a wallet backup page) crashed the client repeatedly. It still needs the standard client running so it is not an alternative.
I finally settled on an online wallet knowing that it is a security issue to entrust a wallet to a website. However it is the only client that has the features I want, does not use 4 GB of my disk space and does not leave unencrypted wallets on my computer.

I took some time to search for other clients or find a client project that I can join. That made me think that there are too much different attempts to build clients. Most of these client projects are either building on the standard client backend or trying to implement the protocol on their own. I think the major goal should be to build a bitcoin library (maybe using the standard client code) that supports all major functionality of the bitcoin protocol and offers different storage modes (full block chain, only unused transactions, only my transactions). That should make it much easier to implement good frontends.

This is just my opinion and proposal. I also offer my help to program something that does not need deep protocol knowledge (maybe frontend code or so) in python.

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[greyhawk]

I finally settled on an online wallet

You want to get your BTC out of there ASAP! This is exaclty how people lose their coins all the time.

[Lem73]

Don't worry about me, I am only playing around with the money I got from the faucet. But of course you are right, don't put real amounts in the hands of other people.

[Jutarul]

Don't worry about me, I am only playing around with the money I got from the faucet. But of course you are right, don't put real amounts in the hands of other people.

online wallets are great for small amounts. I guess that's also the selling point of services like coinbase.com: Ease of use.

[Gabi]

The lightweight clients may not be perfect but they let you send and receive money  

As for the standard client and the 4GB, well, bitcoin rely on ppl running standard clients to keep a copy of the blockchain, to relay nodes and transactions and to verify them (verify is not mining of course!).

[Severian]

Remember that the client just got to 0.7.0 beta release. It takes time to disrupt 5000 years of bad economics.

[Stephen Gornick]

I also offer my help to program something that does not need deep protocol knowledge (maybe frontend code or so) in python.

Armory and Electrum are both written in Python I believe.

There are a number of other projects in Python as well.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Bitcoins should have a lite wallet where it doesn't require the blockchain and instead you connect to peers / nodes..

[the425]

The whole concept of online wallets scare me. Keep that info stored offline and with repeated copies.

[josephliton]

I prefer online wallets though reliability is also to concern.

[shedman]

Bitcoins should have a lite wallet where it doesn't require the blockchain and instead you connect to peers / nodes..

second that. the downloading of the whole chain is just too cumbersome for real usability. I have not used the client for a while and then i have to wait for an hour before i can make any transactions or see if some money arrived. just too slow to be usuable at the moment. Mobile devices are totally overloaded by this

[HDSolar]

Bitcoins should have a lite wallet where it doesn't require the blockchain and instead you connect to peers / nodes..

second that. the downloading of the whole chain is just too cumbersome for real usability. I have not used the client for a while and then i have to wait for an hour before i can make any transactions or see if some money arrived. just too slow to be usuable at the moment. Mobile devices are totally overloaded by this

I think that you have two ways of looking at it, online for small and short term amounts and offline for savings and large amounts. 

[Gabi]

Lightweight clients do exist! Electrum for example. It's NOT an online wallet, but it doesn't have to download the blocks.