Why litecoin?
I'm looking for something that I can get up and running where my dual 5830's would be able to mine a decent amount. Namecoin seems a bit more limited than bitcoin and I don't get the whole idea behind using them to register a domain name.
litecoin seems like it's the weaker brother of the bitcoin. Almost like bitcoin is dollars and litecoin is cents.
Of the two, which is more widely adopted at this point?
At the current difficulty you could mine around 120 litecoins per month. The current price of a litecoin is $4. Litecoin is currently the second biggest crypto currency after Bitcoin.
Here are my estimates for what your hardware could achieve per month in different currencies at this moment:
Bitcoin 1.37 COINS $180
Litecoin 120 COINS $520.74
Namecoin 16.4 COINS $18.45
PPCoin 2079 COINS $714.04
Terracoin 916 COINS $489.18