Does Ethernet over Power Lines work well for home networking?

I am considering putting a computer in my garage (geek alert) and my wireless signal is simply to weak to get through all of the concrete, steel, etc.

I've seen products at Fry's for Ethernet over power lines, but have not tried it. Is this a good solution for home use?

http://www.netgear.com/Products/PowerlineNetworking/PowerlineEthernetAdapters/HDXB101.aspx

I have one of those (or at least, something similar made by Netgear), and it's a bit of a hit and miss. When it works, it works well. You don't get full gigabit speeds, but it's still faster and more reliable than wireless.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to work in every room. Some rooms just won't allow it to find its buddy which is hooked up to the router. I would go ahead and try it - when it works it's great - just make sure you can return it easily in case it doesn't work.

I use it for my home network. my house has two phone jacks - kitchen and master bedroomm and my office is in between the two. so instead of using 802.11g for two desktops, I opted for powerline. the DSL modem, tomato based wrt54g and powerline are safely under my bed along with a UPS. other side of the powerline is in the office and connects the two PC's. while the speeds arent blazing, I get 100mb between the two PCs, and no lag to the internet, including decent speeds with bittorrent, downloading linux iso's...

Powerline Ethernet works well in most homes. Be sure to purchase the latest standard - HomePlug AV rated at 200Mpbs PHY. This standard handles a variety of home wiring much more effectively. By the way, PHY is the raw data rate over the wires. Accounting for error correction and other overhead, the corresponding Ethernet rate is about 100Mbps maximum. Of course, depending on the wiring in your house, your mileage may vary. Using HomePlug AV, you can usually expect something in the 40 to 60 Mbps range for most circuits.

One of the challenges with powerline solutions is that you don't have an easy way to determine how good the powerline links are (in other words, their capacity/speed). I found a solution from Plaster Networks that provides a really easy way to check the performance to any of the powerline adapters in your house - very helpful for troubleshooting especially for larger homes, homes with older wiring, etc. The troubleshooting tools are built right into the adapters.