Whether or not it is profitable to mind on a laptop now, of course, depends upon how high the value of BTC goes. If it skyrockets, I suppose laptop mining now could be profitable.
This is confused. Even if BTC became worth more later, you'd be better off changing your fiat into BTC than mining at a loss now.
Of course, mining with a $30,000 machine will be immensely MORE profitable in that scenario. In that scenario, the rich early adopters of $30,000 rigs will become vastly more wealthy than everyone who can't afford the $30,000 rig.
In general, to make worthwhile income as a miner, your kit needs to be faster than everyone else's. It's all relative.
I take it that, to some extent, LiteCoin has done a better job here.
It didn't really work. There's basically no proof-of-work that you can't design specialised hardware for that beats the crap out of CPU miners. All relative, remember!