When will it go mainstream ?

[shiv]

Is there any way to buy physical bitcoin and have it flown offshore to a private vault ala gold ?

Yes, you can them on ebay.

Physical Casascius Bitcoins

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/OTC-BTC-Coin-1-BTC-Physical-Casascius-coin-Bitcoin-/00/s/OTM5WDg0MA==/$(KGrHqNHJCkFCbQvSgBRBQnSZwS6w!~~60_12.JPG

The only "problem" is that you have to trust the guy who makes them.  But given that there's $5M worth of coins that have been sold, and I haven't heard of problems with a single one of them, I'd say he's built a nice reputation for himself at this point.

Could casascius not potentially redeem ALL of the bitcoins he has shipped if he saved their code?

[Redi]

This is cool and as a newbie i will do this but security is a barrier to entry for mainstream.

If someone comes up with some kind of secure $10 priced wallet/service where all the work is done for you then great.

Why not use blockchain.info/wallet? Everything is done in the browser and then send to the server. The only problem is how safe your PC is, but that's not a problem if you use Linux (and good Open-Source browser like Firefox)
It's at least as safe as normal e-banking is, maybe better IMHO.
(Yes, yes I know that you can use card encryption when dealing with banks, but that does not really solve the problem, there were security breaches in that too.)

Nothing is 100% safe in the IT world...

BTW the main problem with BTC being accepted in real stores is the possibility that government will ban them and arrest everybody who ever used them (so only online anonymous traders will be OK...) IMHO.

[MikeH]

I found the combination of blockchain.info and multibit as a local client quite good as they are interchangeable - I also like that blockchain.info isn't a shared wallet and passwords aren't stored on site.

It took me a while to understand how it all works though and I have a technical background. I think a lot of sites are intentionally vague to make it seem straight forward however that just leaves questions unanswered, particularly regarding the all important private keys.  It would be nice if there was some kind of standard documentation available on all sites laid out in a structured way - from a brief overview to get started quickly including how to secure your wallet, right through to every other detail for the sceptics among us.   I was getting tidbits from a range of sites to piece it together and I think that would turn a lot of people off.