i have had trouble trying to get a node up and running as it is.

Yes 8 Mb is the max size and blocks won't always be that big, but in general we will start to see many blocks greater than the current 1 Mb size.

It will start to take node hosting out of the realm of the average punter lending his spare disk space and CPU cycles "for the good of the network"

I haven't figured where I stand on this yet: support or reject the increase the blocksize increase, support buying lattes with altcoins (this is not an altogether stupid idea), the whole thing is doing my head in.

The Visa or Paypal network transfers a huge number of transactions per minute.  If Bitcoin went that viral are node hosters going to store that magnitude of transactions on their home PC? Home PCs using ADSL are not quite the type of infrastructure that could handle anything like that, not to mention the inefficiencies that decentralization brings.

This is a serious problem that poses philosophical as well as technical questions.  Not even Andresen has presented a convincing argument on this topic.

I believe the final solution to this problem has not yet been formulated.