For what it's worth, here is my opinion about mining.
Mining is a race, a competition. And in any race, not everybody can win. So to me, mining is pointless and it's much simpler to just buy bitcoins...
...UNLESS:
- you're a computer-nerd. You enjoy dealing with a lot of complicated hardware, and you are good at setting them up ;
and/or:
- you have access to very cheap hardware and electricity ;
and/or:
- you are extremely smart and thus you are capable of implementing your own mining software or dedicated device (FPGA, ASIC, whatever) ;
and/or:
- you are concerned about the overall bitcoin security and thus you want to bring as much computing power to the network as you can, even if it will not give you many bitcoins in reward
I personally don't mine as I don't fit in any of the above exceptions. To me, mining would be as silly as signing up for a marathon against professional runners (I can't run more than a mile or something
)