Since I am new here I figured that I might as well just start a topic here in the newbie-section - even without actually doing many searches at this topic.

I discovered the bitcoin currency a couple of months ago and also started to mine as well. What I wonder is how important transaction fees are at this point. I understand that in the future when block rewards are very small the transaction fee is the actual reward.

The standard transaction fee today if I'm correct is 0.0005 BTC. But if I don't include any fee, would the transaction get picked up in a block as of today?

While I probably would just add the 0.0005 BTC in my first transaction, as that fee is of so little value, this post is just for my curiosity (and for creating my very first topic).