My buddy recommends electrum wallets to newbies, but I haven't seen it mentioned here to protect from at least losing your coins accidentally. Is there something wrong with it that I don't know about?
I have used eletrum for some time now. Very easy to use and a deterministic seed is very helpful.
I use a combination of an offline computer for signing transaction and an online watch only wallet. This gives me the security I need while still being able to send transactions.