BitCoins?

Anyone taken the plunge and started using bitcoins for anything? I have an account and other than the free .02 bitcoins I have yet to earn a single coin from letting the process run on my machine for several weeks. I am assuming that this has to do with the massive number of people that are not choosing to pay a transaction fee, (its optional, and set by default to 0).

The newest client doesn't even have the option to "generate coins" so I am wondering if they think that it is big enough that people will just be buying off the markets.  Either way they have been in the news quite a bit lately with hacking and the exchanges getting hit.