Alright alright.  It'll give us Pixar graphics at a balillion frames per second, WHILE calculating pi to a bajilion digits.

doubt we'll wait that long... first vacum tube transistor was in 1907 i believe look where we are now.... we live in exponential times my friend....

Yeh I was reading up at Howstuffworks site and came across this

" Will we ever have the amount of computing power we need or want? If, asMoore's Law states, the number of transistors on a microprocessorcontinues to double every 18 months, the year 2020 or 2030 will find the circuits on a microprocessor measured on an atomic scale. And the logical next step will be to create quantum computers, which will harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. "

Being a student of Physics at university and having studied quantum physics recently, I still ponder

I just want to know why that darn electron passes through 2 slits when we are not looking and passes through 1 when we are. This one question destroys my mind ARGGGGGHHHH.

Screw you quantum physics, why u no follow common sense?

The better question is: Why do sub-atomic particles read our minds? :O

I have serious reservations in regards to practical applications. In principle it sounds great, but in practice the system will probably never be robust enough to function in a real world setting. Sure you may have some computers using it that are well shielded, and able to be super cooled for maximum efficiency, but those wouldn't be in the hand of private citizens. Far more likely that they would be used for scientific research, and by governments as servers, but you probably wouldn't be using them in your home at least directly.

The reality is scientists in this field aren't interested in making a better computer for us as consumers. They want to create a tool that they can use to solve their most difficult problems. That is why the approaches they are using are so impractical. Seriously who is going to want to keep anything super cooled in their house. Not only would it cost the average person a fortune to power, but it is also ridiculously dangerous.

Yea I meant the same thing but you phrased it better ;)

Well to be honest most of the latest and greatest technologies are built by scientists to meet their research requirements as you mentioned. But many of these technologies end up transitioning over to the casual user at some point. I mean who would have thought that mobile phones would ever be equipped with GPS 20 years ago? One of my maths professors who works at CERN tells us how the worldwide web was pretty much invented there to share large amounts of data between scientists, and look where that is.

So I would never put quantum computing beyond us, although it may take a 100 years to get there.

Super Duper Cloud everything.

Mmmm... wait, what? I was enjoying my real-but-not-real Holodeck burger. 

*winks*