I initially chose BIPS because it was recommended on the "choose your wallet" page..
This kind of comment concerns me. There is a red warning on each web wallet on bitcoin.org and users are forced to read them before looking at them. This was mainly designed to educate users about the risk of using these services, assuming that it was better than nothing given that people would be using them anyway. But a comment like this one seems to suggest this wasn't enough in some cases and can confuse some people into thinking these wallets are recommended despite the disclaimer.
I came across bips by chance personally. The vendor I made my first purchased from was using them so I set up my first wallet there also. Prior to bips I kept them on the exchange purchased. I think it would be a great idea to sticky a warning in the Newbie and general bitcoin discussion forum to educate users about the risks of web based wallets.
I didn't even know I could download a software based wallet prior to losing my coins or I would have done that. FYI.. I joined the started with bitcoin in march of this year.
As it should I suppose, I did read the warning but I suppose it's easy to brush those off as an "Oh pfft that will probably never happen, it's just a disclaimer" But in bitcoin it's just not. It should be plainly stated that because of the price demand BTC has worked up to and it's inherent decentralization and control that these attacks/scams/robberies happen at an alarming frequency to those who don't know how to protect their coin. I had a discussion over on reddit about the wallet system and I'll copy it in here, it's basically a recap of what happened when I tried to install bitcoin-QT before going to a web wallet and some improvements I think we can make to help introduce newer users as I was shortly ago:
I completely agree with your ideas here. I'm quite tech savy so for my first btc wallet I chose armory... Oh okay it requires QT..no big deal.. Oh it needs to sync first? Alright I'll let it do that..
Warning: Low disk space
Oh FFS how big is this file.. 11GB?! (Running a 128GB SSD, so kind of a big deal)
These sites need to have a warning that states if you use _______ wallet program the entire blockchain will be downloaded, and tell you roughly how much space that is. This will keep newbies from needlessly draining the bandwidth of peers for something they're possibly not going to use.
Then there needs to be an explanation why you would want to download the QT version, how you're helping the network thrive by leaving it on, etc.
Without making these distinctions to end users you are indirectly slowing the ease of adoption for BTC and clogging up the network.
Also please add a link to the official "bootstrap.dat" torrent and explain where to place it to significantly increase the syncronization speed(and that you can delete/move it once QT renames it to a *.old file)