[chucker]

I'll also add that Apple's $100 is actually quite competitive. PCIe cards on Amazon seem to be $100-150 (but you can get a 2.5 Gb one for cheaper instead; I believe Apple's products automatically support that speed as well). USB or Thunderbolt external ones seem hard to come by and more like $200-300. Switches (you'll need one of those) also seem to range $150-300.

If you don't find yourself transferring a lot of data over the local network, I think it's a bit early. My guess is as 10GigE does become more commonplace (maybe five to ten years from now), Apple will be slow to catch up in terms of pricing, but then eventually just make it standard everywhere.

Now, though, if you're redoing your home, I recommend already putting some Cat 7 cabling in the walls to future-proof it.