Really great question, EKUMA1981. Near as I can tell, the D-Wave System is a bona fide quantum computer, although it uses a different method of creating qubits, or quantum states, than other researchers - hence the controversy and challenge. I thought that
this IEEE article put it into perspective nicely, despite the unfortunate and biased title and over-simplified conclusion.
Fact is, quantum computers are good for a very different set of problems than conventional computers are, just like brains are well suited to solving a different set of problems from conventional computers. For example, traditional (von Neumann) computers are great at brute-force mathematical calculations and high precision, but terrible at pattern recognition, or any algorithm that is exponential in complexity. Brains are great at pattern recognition, but very slow and anything computational. Quantum computers are slow at traditional math calculations, but blazingly fast (theoretically) at things that require testing many states, or options, at once, such as cryptography.
