Augusty,
Get the feeling you've had your share of frustrations. I tend to agree with you on the quality of x10.com stuff. With quality engineering, you get products that are always reliable, well lets say 99% of the time. With crappy engineering, you get products that are reliable let's say 60-70% of the time, on average.
These crappy products can be pretty reliable if all conditions are perfect: they're used in recently built houses with minimal interference and in small numbers; then you'll hear clients say these products are great.
Use those same crappy products in an older house, with an older electric furnace or AC, with powerline intercoms, etc. These users are the ones posting the "why doesn't this work" on forums.
I used to be part of group #2, until I moved into a newly built house; now I'm in group #1, happily working with some crappy products. Mind you I'm slowly swapping out the crappy for better stuff (or so I believe).
I have to admit my cm11a's are still chugging along
And I still use my old CM11a, reliably with HomeSeer. It's tied to my server which is always up: it's my domain controller. In any case, I prefer the macro flexibility of a PC based setup and its logging facility which helps debug the unusual events. But HS is not for everyone, certainly not well suited to the non technical user.
