Purple People Eater
26 February 2007Four or five years ago we needed a new vacuum. The one we were using was a $59 piece of crap that I picked up at Sears while in college and it wasn’t doing the job anymore. I think I needed to change that bag maybe once in 2 years. I just didn’t get a lot of dirt/dust in my apartment.
When Drew and I moved in together we started going through a bag a week much to my surprise. In fact, when it started losing suction the first time it didn’t even occur to me that the bag was full - it had been that long… As it turned out, Harvey was losing the fur equivalent of a large cat on a weekly basis.
Anyway, after a few months of this we decided to upgrade and headed over to Target. One of the first models we saw was this big ugly yellow contraption that looked like a Lego kit, yet was priced like a Ferrari. It looked cheap, it felt cheap, and yet it was the most expensive one in the store. Not to mention I’d never heard of Dyson before. We had ourselves a good laugh and came home with a Hoover WindTunnel bagless.
Back to the present. My trusty WindTunnel has seen better days. We’re still sucking up so much animal fur on a weekly basis that if you were to compress it it would be the size of a large orange. I know this because I have to empty the canister at least three times to get through the whole house. Emptying in itself has become a chore. You have to remove the canister and dump it into a bag. Sounds easy right? It used to be until a year ago when the big dirty filter started coming out when you dump the dirt, which means you have to dig it back out of the nasty bag of fur, dirt and dander then shove it back into the canister. Then you close the lid and slide the canister back into the unit. Again, easy right? Not so much. For some reason the lid was no longer closing securely so I constantly had to force it back into place. Even some creative whittling with a hacksaw could not get that lid to close tight. I was at the end of my rope. With the house on the market I am vacuuming the entire place every other day. There’s no way I was going to successfully use that vacuum for the upcoming weeks or months without a death or divorce from my frustration level.
Time to buy a new vacuum and as it turns out that little yellow Lego had gained some momentum over the years. After doing some research I found hundreds of positive reviews on how it outperformed the multi-thousand dollar Kirby and Rainbow, not to mention the more common Hoovers and Orecks. Seriously, people were in love with this vacuum. I read story upon story about how people would test it by vacuuming the entire house with their old vacuum and then follow it up with the Dyson only to find out that the Stone Age was still buried in their carpet. Granted many users were using pretty old units, but other users seemed to change their vacuums like they change their underwear and they had some pretty high standards.
I was sold. The latest and greatest Dyson is the DC17 Animal. We headed out to Best Buy and got one on sale. The unit is a mix of clear and purple plastic which is actually made out of the same material as motorcyle helmets. What seems cheap on first glance is actually pretty sturdy stuff. I was excited to see what it would do for carpet that had just been vacuumed and I was not disappointed. Not only did the Dyson have a smaller footprint then the Hoover which meant I could get into smaller spaces, but the tools were exponentially easier to use. With the Hoover you had to pull out the hose, attach the wands (which would fall off in the middle of a job) and then attach the tools. With the Dyson you need only pull the wand out of the handle and attach your tool of choice. Easy. Worked great on the stairs. But the real test was the rest of the house. How well would it stack up against my WindTunnel?
A complete vacuum of the entire house yieled an entire cannister of fur, hair and dirt. Impressive. The suction on that thing pulled out dirt that had probably been buried for years. That thing would probably rip a toe off if you got too close. And emptying the cannister? Push a button and the bottom drops out. No fuss no muss. It’s a keeper.
on February 27th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
It’s definitely a kick-ass vacuum, as vacuum’s go. It has a very clever design feature where the extension hose is actually contained within the handle itself.