Right, getting sorted with my internet set up in my new house now. PC is in the 2nd bedroom/office'y type place, where the b'band is piped in directly to that room from outside (cable)

I also have a PC downstairs (it's a ghetto HTPC) and at some point I want to get a laptop - mainly so I can sit with it messing about on the net, msn, etc whilst watching TV in the living room downstairs, or use it when other peeps are round, so I don't have to be upstairs, and very occasionally I might want to use it in the garden on a particlary nice sunny day (hence the emphasis on the word "occasionally" )

The Cable modem I have connects to the PC directly via ethernet/cat5 cable upstairs, and what I DON'T want to do is run lengths of cat5 around the house, and even less so want to drill holes in walls/flooring/ceiling etc and have bits of conduit all over the place.

So the idea was to get a wireless router, connect the modem to it, then the main PC (upstairs) connect to the router via ethernet cable, and the ghetto HTPC and laptop connect to it wirelessly....

But then I got to thinking about these homeplug things. I reckon if I get a wired router (which I might be getting hold of a proper hardware firewall with built in 4 port ethernet switch/router) annd connected the PC directly to that (the firewall/switch), then took a cat5 patch cable to a homeplug upstairs, and fitted 2 downstairs - 1 for the HTPC, and the other with a 10ft cat5 cable for the laptop, which would be fine for sitting on both sofa's, and also enough length to reach out to the garden....

I only thought of it as I heard these are supposed to be very good now, and are supposed to be faster than most basic wireless networks, and also, other than the lappy going from sitting room to garden (less than 10ft travel really) I won't be "roaming" all over the place (even I am not enough of a nerd to use a lappy whilst sat on the toilet - well, not yet anyway) And since I am poor, I'll most likely be getting an old laptop anyway, so will probably be tied down to using it with mains power anyway!

What are people's thoughts on these homeplugs then? How much electricity do they sap? Ie, three homeplugs comparred to a single wireless router... How well do the *actually* work, and do they put any undue stress on the house mains wiring? (Bear in mind I would only be using the network connection for light internet use and possibly remote control over the upstairs PC via VNC or similar)