Another router thread... what to get?

I know we've got some serious networking gurus around so I'm asking here :)

so we've moved into a new larger two story house (2500ish sq/ft), gateway our ISP gave us seems to be complete crap and has no range (typical from the research online)... so I bridged the gateway and installed an older netgear b/g router that is a little better... but not by much.

it's time for a new router, wireless N is a given and I think dual band will be beneficial... we've got three computers hard wired (one used as a media server), on wifi a few game consoles, laptops, smart phones, tablets, cable TV boxes and a roku....

I'm looking for better wifi coverage, as it sits now the router is sitting the center of the house downstairs, coverage seems to be pretty bad upstairs and just ok downstairs... I know ideally I'd just run a second router upstairs but being a rental running cable upstairs isn't really an option (I'm going to look at possible wire run options again but It's doubtful).

looking at around $150 tops

what is the all wise GRMs thoughts?

I was expecting something about woodworking ... shows how much of "nerd" I am/not

I like Cradlepoint routers.

I upgraded from a D-Link cheapie to a Linksys N900 dual band. It gives us significantly better coverage.

I have been in a similar situation and have tried the following methods:

2 Wireless Routers connect through Ethernet over power line:

Upstairs wireless router connect to downstairs ISP router through power line. I have two early version (2006 year model) Netgear Ethernet Over Power units, the speed that I got was not very reliable. It works well sometime but most time we cannot stream videos from upstairs. There are many factors that impact EOP performance and my model is not high performance ones. So YMMV.

1 Wireless Router and 1 Ranger Extender/Bridge

Used a Cisco/Linksys Range Extender/Bridge to setup another access point upstairs which connects to the downstairs router via wireless itself. This should have worked but I picked up a 11n only extender (Cisco/Linksys RE1000) and most of my laptops and tablets are 11g so it endup didn't help too much. The hard part of this setup is finding a spot that has good signal strength to connect to the ISP router but also able to cover the far side.

Setup a single access point in attic

This is our setup now. I ran a cable from the office (where ISP router is) to the garage (1 wall between them. I put a cheap wall plate on each side) then up to the attic (I just duct tapped the cable to the wall in the garage) and from there found an area that could cover the whole house. I don't know your house structure so it might not apply to you. Before you decide to go this route, you might want to put a wireless router in the attic and test if you can fine a place to cover the whole house with good signal strength. Also, many newer houses have the cable and telephone dispatch panel in the attic, you might be able to hook up a router directly in the attic without doing any cabling in the house. I had avoid doing this because it requires a attic visit for any hard reboot. However, after reviewed my routers' log, it appears that I only had 1 unscheduled physical reboot last year so I was comfortable in putting the router in the attic.

My customers seem to have luck with the Netgear RangeMax dual band routers.

I'm using an Asus Transformer, the Wireless N model. Works great so far.

I'm using a NetGear R6300 dual band router. Bought it specifically because I could plug my old Epson printer into a USB port on it and have it shared by all the computers on the network. You can also hook up an external drive to it for network sharing/backup, etc. Seems to have good range; I can take the laptop over to the neighbors house and it still links up.