Should you enter a pool or hash on your own for a newbie with an ASIC miner? Is the bitcoin amount comparable, more, or less? Is Slush's pool good? Are all pools the same pretty much or some better than others?
Thanks!
The answer to your question may depend on several factors, but probably the most important piece of information needed to provide a reasonable answer is what sort of hash rate are you getting with your ASIC?
Hmm, I might be receiving a 8 GH/s at first, but I want to get a 50 - 60 GH/s one. I have it on preorder. But I have the 8 GH/s one shipping to me now.
The calculator I used suggested that at current difficulty factor of 19339258.2724 you'd average a block every 4 months. Now you could get lucky and get a block in less than 4 months, but you'd be just as likely to get unlucky and not find a block for over 8 months. Meanwhile, as time rolls on difficulty will likely increase, so by the time 8 months rolls around, you might not be looking at an average of 8 months per block and with a bit of bad luck could go over 16 months before solving one. At that rate, you may not find more than 2 or three blocks before the block reward is cut in half from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC.
If that is risk you can tolerate, you can consider solo mining with 8 GH/s at least until you see the difficulty get high enough to discourage you, but most people would prefer the steady reliable income of about 6.32 BTC per month than the small chance of 25 BTC in less than 4 months and otherwise 0 bitcoins for longer.