Difference between wallet and mining software? What's the core difference between the mining and wallet software out there? I haven't been able to find any information on this so anything - technical or non is appreciated. Though I'm talking about the wallets that make you download the block chain as well, not the light wallets. Thank you.
The main difference is that the wallet software does not mine or add onto the blockchain as the mining software does. Mining software attempts to find a valid Proof-of-Work, i.e., find an input to the hash function such that the hash is below the target, and has the ability to output a new block if the correct answer is found.  Wallet clients download the entire blockchain, but do not mine for blocks as the mining software does.

In the past when the difficulty was low, the mining software and wallet were in the same program, but they have since split and now many versions of both wallets and mining software exist.