The technology looks good for the coin according to many sources. Has there been any major uptake or applications to date? I am not sure whether I want to go further on this one. It showed a lot of promise but is sort of just sitting there in terms of price after a 50% drop.
Forging works like in NXT - all fees go to forgers, and there's no block reward.
Computation part will enable profits from mining.
Forging with 1000 XEL won't give you too much profit, but you'll be helping the network.