I think PEACEOFWAR made a good point in the difficulty of getting started mining.
It would be a good idea if we had a resource for people getting started with mining. It is rather confusing to someone new. A good project would be some type of tutorial, that anyone could follow to getting started with mining.
1-Identify your hardware
2-Determine if it is worth your time to mine at all
3-Determine if you would use CPU/GPU
4-Which mining application to use for your hardware
5-Solo mine vs pool mining
6-Choosing and mining at a mining pool
I'm sure there are a lot of resources already available on this topic, however I suspect it is fragmented information that requires a lot of research.
Until we get something more solid, here's some answers for peoples reference. #6 and part of 4 and 5 are opinion. This will be for windows although that only matters for #1 and I think 4.
1- In your control panel click the hardware link. Then open the device manager. In the device manager find the display adapters tab. Expanding the tab will reveal the GPU(hardware) your system has installed.
2- Since the value of mined coins is always fluctuating it's almost pointless to do any precise math. It's better to do averages as even with a mining calculator you can easily get variances. A quick and simple way would be to use a hardware comparison chart if you don't know the hash rate your card is capable of,
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison If you don't find yours on the list and you know that your card is years old it is most likely not worth it. If you don't find your specific card on the list you can use the rate from the one with your same model number. For example 7950s whether Sapphire or MSI will have similar hash rates. When you know your potential hash rate find a pool with the ability to see the stats of the top 15 miners(you shouldn't have to sign up) look for a simple number and multiply or divide to get your estimate. For example lets say I have 500Kh, I find the hash rate that's closest to a multiple of mine(so I don't need a calculator) which is lets say 1.5Mh or 1500Kh. That miner is estimated to receive 150 coins per day which means I'll get 50. BUT remember these are all estimates due to the fluctuating difficulty. It is always best to cut that number sometimes in half especially if the coin is new(1-2 weeks) which could be off by as much as 95%. Then it's just a simple matter of conversion. Once again due to cryptos nature it is very hard to tell whether it is worth it, profit is profit so it all depends on how much money and time you are willing to risk for an uncertain reward. You could only make pennies per Mh but if you had 10s of thousands it may be worth it, it's all up to the individual. Remember you may be profitable but you are also wearing down parts that may breakdown and someday need to be replaced.
3- Typically if a coin can be mined with a GPU it is not worth the power that a CPU requires to mine with one. However a newer more efficient higher end CPU could be worth it. It all depends on the individual. Also the hardware that scrypt coins are typically designed for is GPU.
4- The most common miners are CGminer for AMD cards, Cudaminer for Nvidia cards, and CPUminer for CPUs. I'm sorry I don't have the links. The best version for CGminer is 3.7.2 later ones won't work for scrypt, and I'm fairly sure the latest versions of Cuda and CPU are fine also.
5- Solo mining is only good for people with massive/high end rigs, or when a coin has low difficulty (< 1 about). Pool mining is good for anybody really and will net the same results as solo mining if you're a big rig.
6- When choosing a pool it is really up to you aside from a few things. First is the pool new, or well established?(established pools will almost always do you good but new pools aren't always bad just use good judgement and caution with them) Is there support?(if there's a problem with your pool account it's always good to know someone will actually help you) Is there anyone else mining there?(It may not be true that in the long run you'll mine the same amount, I have spent 3 hours on a pool with 5% or less of the net hashrate and found nothing. But on a pool with 30-40% net hash rate found twice as many as I could possibly have found.) What is the fee?(The lowest the best, I think you should donate if you support the service, not be forced. BUT I don't hold it against them because we don't live in sunshine land where everyone would actually donate.) Other than that its your personal preference. Also remember that the best way to pool mine that works best for the coin and everyone associated with it is to keep the hash power spread out. Pools with too high a hashrate can be bad. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and lead by example and try to get others to take notice when you see a pool or the pool you're on with close to or more than 50% net hashrate. In this case find the next two pools with the next highest hash and move to one of them while trying to get others to do the same.
Hope this helps people.
), but as to #6 Mining Pools, at least with CGMiner you can configure multiple pools and use Balance, Load Balance or Round Robin pool management setting to mine at all of them. This way,
, I love my wife who loves me and wants to make a family, so I'm already successful. Everything else is just suga! 
