Which version? Can you elaborate. This sounds stupid, why would anyone program something like that??

@OP - thanks for the tips.

Too complicated for Joe Blow to get right securely first time.  I can't recommend my parents use it for fear their Windows machine is hacked.

Instead of booting a live cd, you could also mount a ramdisk (or make a folder indev/shm) and create a symlink from it to ~/.bitcoin, then create your wallet, addresses, backup etc.. This, of course, assuming you're already running some Linux distribution. Then the files will only have ever resided in RAM; unmount the ramdisk (or delete the folder you created indev/shm), and the symlink to it, and it'll be almost as if the files were never there.

Just don't forget to make the backup, since otherwise--because it is in RAM--once you shut down it'll be gone forever.

Why? Until you put any bitcoins into it, the wallet is worthless, so losing it won't be a problem. It's no different from the livecd approach, except that instead of running a whole OS in RAM, you're just storing a folder in RAM.

If you ever need to use the wallet, just keep a copy on whatever medium you used to back it up, and copy it back to your ramdisk. where you make whatever changes you need to make. I don't know if you even need to overwrite the old copy with the changed one, since all the transactions are tracked/confirmed by the network.

Edit: If you thought I was suggesting not to keep a back-up on a physical medium, that is definitely not what I was saying. It's always a good idea to keep a back-up. Thought I'd clear that up, just in case.

Use Linux or get a Mac, then backup your wallet. :p JK lol Sorry I couldn't resist this immature joke.

Thanks!

Great guide.
i agree with notion to encrypt walet.dat when storing it.
also the length of password is critical. so mare at least 13 character pw that includes letters numbers and special chars. if you think that is too difficult to remmember - it is cryptologically as safe if your pwis like this: SoM3pW55$$$$$ as long as it is a secret which char was repeated at end....

yes i was thinking same
aid2action

0 is so important that it is the only number that had to be invented! 8^)