Again, thanks for all that really clear and solid info. I understand.
Note: For the purposes of increased anonymity it is generally recommended that you use a different bitcoin address every time you receive bitcoins. If you follow this advice you'll get used to having more than one bitcoin address no matter what wallet you use.
So I'd have ONE wallet somewhere, then attach different bitcoin addresses to it?
If that's best practice, I'll do it, and yes, I believe in privacy, although I am not super paranoid. But payments to a particular cause I believe in, payment for filesharing activities and whatever else I want to do in the future is nothing that my bank (and whoever accesses their records) needs to know about.
Great to know about the plugins and other ways to protect yourself.
It's taken the QT client over 5 hours to go from 16,000 to 15,100 blocks remaining. In light of it's getting increasingly slower this is exponential at this point...
There is simply no telling how long the client will need. Does anyone keep an eye on the situation with this, or actually care? Or did you all set up your clients years ago and shrug at what's going on with newbies? I realise that not much can be done, but if this is just going to get worse in the future, then it's untenable.
I'd say 99% of non-geeky people would have dropped off a LONG time ago. I'm sticking with it, but for all I know right now I might not be done until after New Year's. Those last 1000 might take a week.