your savings wallet should be far away, and on an encrypted partition.
if you keep the two together, they are each as vulnerable as the other. i don't mind having a 5-10 BTC wallet on my phone or on my day-to-day computer, exposed to the 'net. but my savings wallet? nope.
Understood. Then my real question would be: how do I create a new wallet to be used with the same client?
Thanks for your time.
nope - you want two wallets. that is, two separate clients. preferably running on two different machines.
after you've got this down:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet
...go here, for the good stuff:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=5194.0
Thank you very much (everybody) - this forum is great: never in my life I have learned so much in so little time.