Working in amounts doesn't tell the whole story. Volatility is easier to understand when expressed in percentages. Have a look at the charts on bitcoinwisdom.com:

http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd

Explore various intervals (time period). Even at the 1d interval, there are 15% swings. Is this bad, given the qualifier that "it is Bitcoin" after all? That depends on what you expect Bitcoin to be. If you expect to use it as a currency, then yes, it's very bad. If you earned your Bitcoins yesterday, and you have to pay a bill today, then that kind of swing is a big problem. You could end up taking a 15% haircut. If you expect to use it as a speculative investment, then you've got a lot of opportunities for trading.

Both of these are fine, but they're opposing goals. Most economists agree that you want stability in a currency; that is the currency should act as an accounting measure only. It is a means of storing value at as close to NET zero gain/loss as possible, with it's real value being the ability to transact goods indirectly.

I'm not sure what values Bitcoin endeavors to hold, but if we're using duck typing, it looks a lot more like a speculative investment than a currency.