It always seemed odd to me that the protocol expects everyone to always have the full blockchain (currently over 2 GB of data). The response is always "when it becomes a problem we'll fix it", but isn't it already a problem for mobile use etc? The other problem I never see mentioned is the slow speed in getting transactions confirmed (for me it takes maybe 30 minutes)

Or more likely, most "average" users won't host their own wallets, they'll use a third-party service (i.e. a bank)

Try Electrum http://electrum-desktop.com/ It uses servers with the full blockchain to verification and has another neat feature - deterministic wallets. You keep the seed around and you can recover the wallet.

With the original client, having the appropriate port open/forwarded helps as well, and my understanding is that part of the slow sync is the inefficient database design. It's on the list of #TODOs.

Don't use the standard wallet. Multibit syncs a lot faster.

You don't need the block chain to use bitcoin. Honestly, there only needs to be one complete copy in total across the entire world. It's just a quirk of the current client that it insists on such a download in an era where it takes more than a few minutes.

agreed. If people can't understand bitcoin in at least some basic way they will not use it. Faq's on bitcoin are full of questions which nobody has ever asked. Even bitcoin enthusiasts can't explain bitcoin, because they don't understand it either. constantly changing account/addresses? i don't like it, would rather one account and have payments tagged with sender info. i still have not managed to find out if bitcoin supports this. can't make sense of messaging aspect, labeling, verification , don't understand mining. Ordinary folks will not buy into this if it can not be explained in two short sentences, no matter how logical or robust or brilliant bitcoin might be.