I think this will be my first serious character, focussing mainly on Illusion and Alteration to handle enemies, the two most interesting of the magic schools.

However, I think my very first character will be a mix of a few things, I'll probably play the tutorial and a little beyond to get the feel of both stealth, range and melee styles. Then I'll start over and pick the one I like the most, which will probably be a pure sorceress.

In Oblivion, you can only get up to 95% spell effectiveness if you are below Journeyman level in your armor. The effective is reduced more, the lower your armor skill is. So when you are a lower level character, it's tough to get much from your spells.

This. Mine shall be old with a beard.. and any pointy hats he can find. Otherwise just a hood I guess.

Nah. Playing with no magic at all sounds more fun to me.

My first character shall be a pure mage, either a Breton or an Altmer. I will also be using some Smithing, so I can make enchanted jewellery, and Alchemy.

You know....I was planning to make my first character (Breton) strictly mage but i decided i don't want to miss out on archery and melee so i'm going for a Nord that specializes in all combat types.

I am going to make my Breton regardless though, which is bound to happen at any random moment when i'm playing.

Mage with some stealth on the side while dumping my perks in the mage schools. I can't pass up on alchemy and it's never a bad idea to know how to sneak around and cut a purse. And there's always the possibility that speech is leveled passive.

I allways and only play pure mage classes characters in all TES games, so I will honor the tradition in Skyrim.And pretty naturally my first character will be a Breton male mage, mastering eventually all magic attributes.I don't plan on waving even the smallest of daggers.

Thank you.

I would never play a totally pure mage, because if you look at it from the point of view of the inhabitants of Nirn, with the world they have to live in, who the hell would go around without at least a dagger? No one sane, unless you were the most arrogant of mages, and even then. good luck with that magic reflecting Lich. So my mages will always have a dagger or shortsword, because they aren't stupid.

Hopefully in Skyrim the penalty is even higher than 5%. It's ridiculous that a battlemage can run around in full heavy armor and have his magic be almost as strong as a pure mage wearing only robes

I was, yet as Skyrim allows you to distrubute points directly to magicka with level ups, rather than capping magicka through intelligence and willpower, I will probably end up training up other skills for the primary purpose of enlarging my magicka pool, and getting as many as possible of my magic related perks. But that won't happen until I have already maxed all of my magic skillsets. And after my magika powers are exponentially heightned, I will return to using all magic all the time.

I would normally key in on magic and enchanting, with probably only sword, speechcraft and sneak as my non magic related areas of expertise.

I will still primarily wear mystic's nothing until I get a nice pair of robes, and then robes the overwhelming majority of the rest of ingame forever.

You can still use the summon bit of the conjuration aspect. And yes while you could use bound armor and weapons seeing they're technically magic, they also come with some flaws.
Taken from Oblivion:

Using bound armor still causes a drop in spell efficiency so if you use bound armor, you need to train your light AND heavy armor rather than just 1 while wearing light or heavy armor and if you train either armor skill, you might as well just wear it seeing it won't cost magicka to recast every time and will be weightless at the appropriate skill level. And then there's the fact that it removes your current gear so you lose all enchants. The easy way out is to cast a shield spell which does the same as bound armor (reduces damage intake) while not lowering spell efficiency.

And the only advantage a bound weapon has, is the fact that it's weightless but still needs to be trained and a weightless weapon is not better than an enchanted one. And for the magicka you spend on conjuring a weapon, you can cast a feather spell to negate the weight of the equipped weapon.

Thus even though bound weapons/armor are an option as a pure mage, they're a poor substitute for the real deal and if you want to use weapons or armor, you're better of using real ones.

Just got to comment again on a trend I've noticed throughout this thread:

A lot of folks seem to consider a mage 'impure' if he has a weapon on him, or if it's not a certain type of weapon (dagger, staff, or shortsword). I must disagree with this assessment for several reasons.

Wizards, witches, mages, sorcerors, all throughout fiction have handled just about every weapon a 'warrior' character has. It's not whether or not you use a weapon at all that defines the difference between a wizard and a warrior, it's your level of proficiency. Any child could pick up an axe or blade and have a basic, rudimentary understanding of it's use, whereas a seasoned warrior will see the weapon as simply an extension of themselves. Regardless of whether a mage utilises a polearm, longsword, axe, or flail, they'll have at least enough common knowledge to crack a few mudcrab shells. Will they be the equal of a warrior in skill? No. That's what the difference between an armed mage and a battlemage is.

Furthermore, as another already commented, it's a dangerous world the TES characters live in. There are many, many ways to neutralise magic, and anyone with a smidgeon of intelligence would have some form of backup.

As for Conjuration magic 'blurring the lines' between a pure mage and a warrior, I disagree. Just as a warrior works hard and trains daily to know his weapon, he also comes to know his armour; eventually even the heaviest, bulkiest cuirass would become like a second skin. A conjurer achieves the same effect, only through magic. He doesn't actually know how to move around in armour, but the armour he conjures essentially is weightless, and no burden on him. More than that, unlike a warrior, your armour has a time limit, forcing you to take a slightly more offensive role in a conflict so that the battle can be resolved before you armour fades. In the end, claiming that conjuring weapons and armour simply makes you another warrior is like saying using Alteration magic to unlock doors and chests makes you just another thief.

I'm another one who has never played a pure mage. I will do it in Skyrim with an Altmer named Taurion, but I don't know when.

I have a character and playstyle mapped out for each race, but apart from my first play (Nord warrior/blacksmith), the order in which I play them will be completely random.

Regardless of what order the pure mage comes up, I'm really looking forward to it.

I think you misunderstand what people mean by "pure". When people say "pure" mage they don't mean that people who use magic and weapons are somehow 'bad' but rather that they are putting reliance on something other than their magic. For something to be pure it is supposed to consist of one substance rather than many so a "pure" mage only uses magic in 99% of their encounters and uses the least martial focused weapons they can when they do have to rely on melee.

I am definitely cause the spell making system makes it so fun and so flexable and it would be fun owning a dragon emperor style, hope the put levitate spell in skyrim

Well I want to. It depends how effective the new magic system is.

By the way did you know you can wield a staff and a sword/axe or a duel staffs

I am going to stick with my mage slashing dicipline. Nothing more fun then running down a mage and chopping him down, lol.