is there a more up to date version in the 2012 series that will do what i want them to do.
Not really. Roaming profiles require one computer running the Server OS (not a Home Server version) and the other running a client OS and there's a fair amount of tinkering required in addition to relying on Active Directory. When it works, its brilliant but it could also be outside of the scope of what you want to do. Besides, use of an Active Directory domain and roaming profiles requires the use of Vista Business or the Pro versions of Windows XP, 7 and 8. Home Basic and Home Premium versions cannot connect and use Active Directory domain services. You'd have to buy the server OS and upgrades for all the devices involved, a rather costly affair.
The second option requires the use of a server OS or a copy of Windows 7/8 Professional. You switch out of the user you were working on at PC#1 and simply log into that user from another computer using Remote Desktop, with the person sitting physically at PC#1 on a different user that won't affect your activities. I do this at home with a large family of six and it works really well.
Of course, Windows 8 also does a large part of what you want. If your documents, pictures and music can be synced to Skydrive then you can have all that available on any Windows 8 computer that you work on so long as you use the same login and password that you used to set up your Microsoft account on the first computer. Modern UI apps, settings and your wallpaper will be synced over, but programs like Office and other browsers will have to be loaded on separately. I'm not sure if the desktop layout and shortcuts are also synced, its something that I'm planning to test out later.
The last resort is a feature in Windows 8 Enterprise. You load a lightweight version of the OS onto your flash drive (preferably a USB 3.0 version) and carry that around with you, using any computer to boot into it and continue working from anywhere. However, no reviews are out that have tested this functionality, so I'd wait a bit to see if this could work for you.