I discovered Bitcoin earlier this week and this forum shortly after; I've wanted to dip my toes in it, but in all honesty, I've been afraid to buy even one mBTC because of all the stories of hacking and scams I've read on here.

I've been trying to learn about how to set up a safe, secure Wallet, but when I read about people doing things like running Unix to access Apache servers on the Tor Network and encryption and writing subroutines in Java, it's all alien to me; I have no idea how any of these things work.

I just have an ordinary, Windows 8 laptop; I have no idea what kind of security features it has or if it's secure; I don't know if I've ever been hacked or had a virus. I have no idea if it's safe to set up a wallet on my computer. What can I do? What can an average computer user do to set up a safe, secure Wallet and keep their Bitcoins as hack/scam-proof as possible?