Powerline network adapter question(s)

I recently became aware of powerline network adapters, but am having a hard time finding up to date information on them. The acquaintance at whose home I saw one had purchased one from either Best Buys or Microcenter for ~$120. It is a Netgear. I took a quick tour of ebay and amazon.com, and saw a Netgear X102-a kit of 3 gadgets-1 transmitter(?), and 2 receivers for approx. $50. I then googled the item for a review, and ended up at CNET. The date of the review was from 2002. Looking at the list of gadgets on Amazon, I see many with the X102, but they all have different suffixes, and widely different prices.
Is there any way to find a reliable review of what is the latest and greatest? As with everything electronic, technology moves up and prices go down. I'd hate to buy a 6 year old technology for $x.xx, advertised as being 50% off, when something made more recently starts out costing half as much to begin with, and is usually superior in performance.
Plasma and LCD screens are a good example. Five years ago, $3000 was a good price for a 42" plasma, where today, a screen with longer life, higher resolution, and better contrast ratio can be had for well under $1000.
Any recommendations (manufacturer, model#, etc.) would be greatly appreciated. My wireless router is a D-link, and sits in the basement.
We get ok wireless reception on the first floor, but I often wished I could use the laptop on the second floor or the screened porch out back.
Thanks.

 

Here's a recent PC Pro (decent UK PC magazine) review:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/236436

The technology is in a similar situation as early wireless. Devices can work fine if connecting like to like, but struggle connecting devices from different manufacturers.

 

I played around with a powerline network adapter
it worked really well
it was even an older slower model
several points

1) the speeds are great - even the older slower formats
2) certainly even the older slower speeds blow wireless out of the water , one wonders why they are not used more , and for more demanding applications
3) the newer models have their own drives built into the hardware, whereas as the one i had required a driver being installed on the remote computer
- makes for more flexibility for non computer uses - say an xbox
also means that you do not have to play around with the networking on a pc
4) the one problem i had was switching back on a laptop to standard wireless networking
the networking setup had to be changed back bigtime by a major system restore
I do not remember specifically but remember it took a lot of effort on my part to restore the simple wireless function back
Overall i was very impressed
With a powerline adapter of the type where the drivers are installed on the device the resulting networking changes would not be an issue