Since I'm basically in the same position (started a few days ago in Slush Pool), I'd like to chime in...
Right now I'm doing close to 1GH/sec with 4 GPUs, which I know are terribly inefficient compared to ASICs (but they do keep the room warm I must say
).
Since my only goals are to mine a single BitCoin to at least have participated in the whole thing and learned about it (like a fun project), continued use of these GPUs is out of the question (the electrical power bill would kill me long before I mined 1BC).
I've set my eyes onto some of those Block Erupter (330MH/s) devices, which aren't the fastest but still much better than any GPU in terms of efficiency. And in a group, I could let them run without paying excessively for the electrical comsumption.
With 10 of these, I assume it should be possible to reach 1BC over the next several months (since they don't consume much power, their low/shrinking effectiveness compared to the "big boxes" isn't of much concern to me).
Which brings me to the next question :
Since I got interested into the bigger ASIC builds and looked around the web, I quickly found out they are basically nowhere to be purchased (Germany), even EBay only has a few (older versions, most of which still carry a hefty price tag).
If I stick to mining, is there any reliable and available supplier of reasonably/low cost ASIC designs in Europe (ready to ship, not those preorder & pray deals) ?
Right now it looks like I would be best off to settle with a few USB miners, as even if I had the cash I'd have troubles getting my hands on even used equipment (which surprised me, I assumed 'outdated' mining equipment would be on sale rather frequently, at least here in Germany that's absolutely not the case - on EBay or Amazon Germany I'd have to pay upto 50$ just for a 2nd hand 330MH/s Block Eruptor *scratches head* )
And allow a final question which so far I can't answer myself :
Until recently, I was under the impression that BitCoins were the only "real thing", the one, single digital crypto-currency.
But just from browsing the forums, I stumbled over a whole series of other "coins" apparently similar to BitCoin which can also be traded over various exchanges. Some even seem to be suitable for CPU mining, that some claim to do (as they're too slow for reasonable BitCoin mining even in pools).
In short, what's the future and the general meaning of BitCoin, if there are "alternative alternatives" popping up left & right? Those seem like a parallel Universe to me, a few years ago we had BitCoin (which got all the media attention), now I read stuff about LiteCoin, PeerCoin, NameCoin and some others I can't recall.
That's something that (so far) doesn't make much sense to me (plain : why the need for parallel ones that to the untrained eye on 1st sight look like "BitCoin lookalikes" ? )
- edit -
Forgot a final question about those USB ASICs :
Is it in theory (gotta be careful) possible that those could contain a Trojan (like any other 2nd hand USB device could hold) that compromises the Host System? Or is their Firmware hard-wired and can't be modified?
Wouldn't want to stick some 2nd hand USB devices into a System to crunch BitCoins just to find out that System got corrupted.
