OK, so for receiving coins you don't have be connected to the internet, in fact you don't need to do anything as long as you have your wallet secured.

But what about sending coins? - I assume internet connection is needed in order to broadcast the transaction, but do I need to download the full blockchain in order to successfully send coins?
Can I just open a fresh client for less than a minute, send some coins and close it immediately after that? Is that enough time for the transaction to appear in the blockchain?



Also I would like to transfer the few coins I have to a new wallet, because my current one is on my Windows machine encrypted and I'd rather not open it in this environment, just in case there is some malware waiting for it. Is this the right procedure:

1 - I fire up a LiveCD, install a bitcoin client, get some new addresses, write them down, backup wallet.dat.
2 - Again load LiveCD and copy my original wallet.dat to be used with the bitcoin client, but this time with an internet connection, so I can send the coins to an address from step one.
3 - Delete original wallet.dat and keep the one created in step 1.

Did I miss anything?