Ok, after doing some research on the difference between sCrypt (and bCrypt) and the SHA256 used by BTC, and seeing that I can't (and why) mine LTC with an ASIC, and looking at the calc at
http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ it looks like if I bought a Jalapeno in June, got it in Oct (they claim 2mo delivery) then there's very few machines on their list that would even pay themselves off. I think the Jalepeno would up up grossing around 5-600, for a net of about 100% profit. That's not bad, but for only a couple hundred, I'm not sure it's worth the hassle and the risk.
I suppose the question is, with the difficulty on BTC projected to hit 10,000,000,000 (10 billion!) by Jul-2014, is there any machine that will be able to mine cost-efficiently, that even exists right now, past the new year?
And, more important, is there any machine that, with that difficulty curve, will even be able to pay itself off?
I suppose you could take the current projection of 62% difficulty increase per mo, and temper it with the fact that ASICs just came out, and it's likely that the diff increase will drop back down a bit, but it still means you'll be competing with much bigger industrial hashing machines kicking out things in the hundreds of GH/s or even TH/s...and at the higher difficulty they've created.
So, if I was going to purchase something like a Jalapeno, I'd be looking for the INITIAL payoff in BTC probably, just to pay for the machine...but after that, I'd likely be trying to swap an an altcoin of some sort.
Is that doable? Is there any altcoin that's projected or even HOPED to be competitive by an end-of-the-year timeframe.
Heck, if I could find some sign of SHA256 hashing being profitable into the new year, I'd consider dropping the $2k on a KnCMiner Mercury...I even got the wife's go-ahead. >.>
). 
