The thing that everybody is forgetting here is that it is not just the fingerprint image that is doing the authentication. It is a combination of factors including heat and pressure sensitivity on the fingerprint scanner itself. Therefore, even if you were able to get a fingerprint image, and break the encryption, it would still not do you much good.

There are still some improvements to be made in the biometrics arena, but most are not involved with the validity of the authentication method itself, but are related more to the speed of authentication since these images can get relatively large (compared to a password) and DB queries can take quite some time. Up to a minute or more in some cases.

The other drawback of biometrics is that it requires client side hardware. There will probably never be a time where the world goes to all biometrics, but it does have a very good fit in some scenarios. For example, how about for verifying memberships at a health club instead of carrying around a card all the time.