Another newbie poster here. I'll add a question. I was trying out some transfers between some of my addresses. I sent a small amount and was asked about paying a miner's fee. I declined the charge because I was sending such a small amount. Is this bad? What are the consequences of not paying the miner's fee?
Also newbie on this forum so trapped to posting here.. (lol) But been following BTC for a very long time. If you don't pay a fee, then the miners have no incentive to process your transaction so it could take a very long time before you get confirmations that your transactions are safely packed into the block chain. As I understand, (from memory) the Bitcoin network calculates the priority of all transaction requests based on the fee (if any), amount, age of the transaction request and time between inputs and outputs. (Might be a few other variables, but i think that's it)
So low or zero fee + small amounts + quick flipping of the value between addresses = Super long delay until your transactions are confirmed. The miners will eventually get to you as your transaction request gets older and gets pushed up in priority, but don't expect fast confirmation. (Possibly days i think.. Never tried such a worst case personally.) Inserting a fee buys you priority. Big transactions and old Bitcoins also get pushed through faster.
Also keep in mind that the name "Miner" in the long run isn't really accurate. In the short term, the system rewards miners with new Bitcoins for doing their hard work (they spend a lot on hardware and electricity!), but over time this goes to zero and the miners will *only* make income from the transaction fees. This is by design and the more you learn about it the more you will admire it's brilliance.
In the long term though they will be transaction processing service providers. We'll probably still call them miners, but they won't get free Bitcoins for their efforts. And said fees will be amazingly low compared to the best a traditional bank could ever achieve.
