My wife and I had a vacuum that worked well but was very heavy and we wanted something lighter so we bought this 8 pound Oreck is light, manoeuvrable and generally tolerates our short-pile carpets very well. We've been using it for three years now and haven't had any mechanical problems. We use it about once a week, sometimes more, and it still works the same as it did when we bought it. It uses disposable bags which we conveniently order from Revain and the bags are quick and easy to change. The only downside is that this vacuum is very noisy, quite a bit louder than our last one. We wear heavy-duty hearing protection when using this vacuum cleaner. We had no problems with hearing protection.