It's unfortunate that new adopters typing "bitcoin exchange" into Google will still see Gox at the top of the search results. That's exactly what I did back in April/May (although I was partly influenced in sending them my cash on the basis that they were the biggest guys around at the time and claiming to have had 80% of the market a few months earlier, a claim which they obviously can't now make).
n.b. I'm now on Bitstamp
It's a pity we can't warn new folk to avoid Mt.Gox. How can they best be warned that they'll get their USD stuck there, so that "I can't get my money back" doesn't become a story which the mainstream media pick up on, thereby hurting Bitcoin's credibility in the eyes of the public/future investors?
Its fairly common in open source to expect a degree of intelligence and hope anyone below it will learn from their mistakes, I'd swear some projects even leave in clunky stuff to encourage folks to learn some coding to fix them. As Bitcoin gets more popular it will go further and further down the idiot scale and owners of virus infected plague pits will loose a lot of coins so for now the rough edges on the ease of use and gox will just singe these liabilities before they get honey glazed and spit roasted from having to be responsible for their own security.
Shesh, Harsh words
stan.distortion. So you are sounding that even a pc is only to be used by the techno-elite. I think the protocol/environment around bitcoin needs to mature to the point where it is easy to use as an iPad.
strawbs, I recommend people start on Bitstamp, and if they feel like being "Mr Monopoly Day-Trader", they can switch to gox with a small portion they don't need 'right away' ( as in, eeek, gotta pay my rent...where is all my fiat ). I think despite some problems, it performs better under stress than bitstamp.
