Well aside from this consciousness argument you'd better hit the books Don Quijote. Just from my own personal reading (especially from Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan) I've learned that the human brain is actually more powerful on various axes. If you're talking about raw processing power the human brain wins because there are so many neurons. You can think of each neuron as a bit because it is either sending a signal, or it isn't. I did these calculations over a year ago and I don't have the papers anymore (I need to find my book to get the accepted number of Neurons per brain) but rest assured the values I came up with were still quite a ways ahead of any personal computer (yes, the super mainframe computers are capable of out - processing the human brain, and I'm sure that in 5 years personal computers will also be able to out process the human brain).I have a degree in Psychology and a degree in Computer Science and I can't see any reason why the human brain is capable of doing anything a computer cannot.
I'm still having a hard time deciding for myself if you can program consciousness. If consciousness is being aware of your existence, and existence is being, then what exactly is the being that the computer would be conscious of? I mean, would it know it's a system of silicon wafers? Would it be able to program itself? Would it be able to remanufacture itself and take over the world only to get its butt kicked by Arnold Smazzafraazawazzaafoo?