Good question. There’s a long explanation and a short explanation. I’ve tried to explain this to my friends and people I meet who ask about it, but normally their eyes just gloss over after about 5 minutes.

I’m going to refer to a website I found that explains it fairly well in an easy to understand manner. Check out www.bitcoinmining.com and watch the video. It gives you an idea but you really need to do more research as it has become much more advanced since I started mining.

Thanks for the question. I think you may have given me an idea for a new post to write about.

Try using BFGMiner: https://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer

You just need to find a pool and join it. Here is a list of pools:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

Thank you for the kind words and fellow interest in Bitcoins and mining. I try to do my best but run a little behind answering questions from time to time as I get so many. I would say that in your situation it all depends on what kind of graphics card you are using as that is the main determinant. I wouldn’t say that it would be worthless to try, but that you are probably going to end up paying more in electricity than you make in Bitcoin on average.

Check out this site to see what your GPU can do:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

And check out this site to get an idea of how profitable/unprofitable it would be:
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ 

Good question. The difficulty will go up as more hashing power comes online so it is relative. However, I would contend that it would still mine faster than what you have at the moment given what you have stated.

Here is a really good calculator I recommend that will help predict your profitability depending on a number of factors, such as network hash rate, difficulty, your hash rate, power usage, etc.

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ 

With the exception of the new ASIC’s that are coming out, mining is dependent on the GPU that you are using and nVidia GPU’s are not nearly as good at processing the complex mathematical equations that are necessary for mining as ATI Radeon cards are.

I recommend Bitcoinx: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
It is a great way to help determine your profitability considering a number of factors. 

It all depends on how much you pay for electricity, really. From what I know the 6850 hashes around 250 MH/s, which isn’t much, especially considering the recent moves of the market, so it is going to be a tossup at that speed right now and almost irrelevant once the ASIC’s come out on the scene. While I’m all into Bitcoin, this may be a case at some point where you would be better off mining Litecoin and exchanging that for Bitcoin.

It will be interesting to see the effects of the ASIC releases on small/hobbyist miners. I would not recommend entering the pool by buying a new GPU rig right now, but if you already have a setup that hashes well then I would still run it until it is no longer profitable. But if you are looking to invest money at this time, I would put it into an ASIC if I were you, as there will be a much better chance of recouping your investment and profiting faster. Of course, there are always other indicators that may change along the way, but that is how I see it at this moment.

Nope. ATI Radeon cards are the best GPU’s out there for performing the complex mathematical equations that mining requires.

For a list of average hardware mining specs:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison