Does the javascript remoting that rolled out in '11 really work for auto-complete?

[tbucket]

Back in the Summer '11 or Spring '11 release, JavaScript remoting became available, and the example given was "Google-style auto-compete fields" in a VForce page.  I thought that was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and soon I would be converting every VForce page we had written and replacing standard lookup fields with the auto-complete fields.  i also expected to see tons of board activity about this topic;  however, I really never heard/saw that much about it afterwards. If I google it now, I get a few things, but not a lot.  When I ask a couple of my developers, sometimes its like I am the one telling them about it or they do not immediately jump all over the idea..

So my question is: does the javascript remoting work well for this type of custom field? I speaking of converting a standard lookups field on a vforce page so it behaves like an auto-complete field.   How is the speed...let's say we are hitting an object with 5,000 records or so?