Quote from: Txslady on November 10, 2013, 07:58:35 PM

I am new to the whole mining experience but have learned a lot from this site. I have come to realize that mining bitcoin is not going to be very effective for me. I have decided to mine alternate coins. I am doing this for fun so I am using my laptop and if/when an inexpensive hardware becomes available to plug into my laptop via usb for scrypt I may purchase. I will be getting a usb miner for the sha coins. I know ROI is not very likely. Can someone tell me how to decided which ones are good or is is better to just mine some of each one and hope that one day they will be worth something.

You could check websites like CoinChoose to see which coins are worth it, but always do your research to see if they are premined or are known to contain a virus.
If unsure just upload the software to a virus scanner website like VirusTotal.