Thanks guys, very helpful. Given my casual level of play I'll probably just try to stick to the advised ingame item rating. The thing that confused me at first though was that looking at mods in game, such as a purchasable armoring 28 piece (as an example), there is no 'level' (62/72/etc) given on the little info icon. I initially thought people were just dropping the '1' from the front of the item rating (ie, 146 becomes 46). Anyway, I looked up an armor 28 piece in torhead and a green one gives a level of 66. So I guess if I ever need to discuss my gear on the 62/72 front I'll take a quick skim of a site like that.

Hopefully a simple question I just wasn't able to find an answer for (I looked, I swear!). I notice that people refer to higher end gear as level 62/66/72, etc. My highest character is a level 51 BH. He has gear at level 140/146 after getting some stuff from the Makeb vendor and from HM FPs. I'm not sure how this level 146 gear is related to the 62/72 numbers I see people referring to? I'm only really interested to the point that when I eventually (going slowly) hit max level and want to try out an operation or level 55 FP I know that I'm an appropriate gear level. On the threads I've viewed on this topic I've noticed that most gear level stuff is referred to in the 62/72 format.