After looking at least a dozen vacuum cleaners and reading and rereading everything I could, I decided on getting a bagged vacuum cleaner.

I chose bagged because bagless machines require frequent emptying. Every time you empty the vacuum, you risk kicking up a cloud of dust into your face.  This is not a good thing when you have allergies like I do.

So I went back to the stores again and reexamined the field of potential purchases. I spoke with more sales people with varying degrees of expertise. And I spoke with friends about their machines.

One thing that was very obvious to me was that bagless vacuums are way more prevalent in the stores. Bagged machines don’t seem to have much of a future in the home.  But there will always be people with allergies ready to buy a good bagged vacuum.

After much more deliberation, (I really do overanalyze things) and more Googling, I ended up buying a Shark Navigator.  I ended up with a bagless unit.  The infomercials were very impressive and the online comments I found were overwhelmingly positive.

Among the factors that prompted the purchase were that it had a decent length cord. Some vacuum cleaner cords are ridiculously short.  Cord length is not a good place to cut costs.  One of the big disadvantages of bagless vacuums is the expense of the filters that need to be replaced every so often. Navigator filters are cleanable and reusable. And they give you two so you can clean one and while it’s drying, keep vacuuming.

I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond. Using their 20% off coupon which comes in the mail like clockwork, I was able to knock $40 off the price.

After reading the manual, I ran it over carpeting that had been vacuumed the day before. The amount of dust and dirt I picked up was astounding. The carpets looked lighter. I realized I should have gotten rid of that old Hoover years ago.

The dust cloud I envisioned when I emptied it never happened. When I emptied the Navigator’s dust receptacle, I had it far into the garbage can so the dust fell very far from my nose.  Emptying the Navigator actually proved to be a lot less dusty than changing the bag on any vacuum I’ve had before. Changing the bags was always a chore that kicked up dust. Emptying the Navigator takes a second. It’s easy and it’s clean.

So far I’m happy with the Shark Navigator.  I’ve been told that vacuum cleaners don’t last as long as they used to. This machine seems to be fairly well built. I hope it lasts. I don’t want to have to go through all this again for a long time.

By the way, I am not paid to write this blog. I really did do a lot of research and I did buy a Shark Navigator. It wasn’t given to me for review purposes.

We learned our sales spiel.. We learned how to use the visual aids. We learned how to properly demonstrate the machine.

We were psyched to hit the streets and start making big money.

The pay structure is a scam. The customer isn’t scammed by it but the sales team is. For your first sale you get a $50 commission. Yes, that’s right. Sell a $2000 machine and make only $50. But the percentages increase as you sell more machines. If you sell four or five (I don’t remember which) you get a vacuum for free. You can sell it or give it away. Most would choose to sell it and keep the $2000. Once you get the free machine, you are back to a low commission (I don’t think it went all the way back to $50) and have to sell your way up the commission ladder to another free machine.

Tristar vacuum

The math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Sales calls are scheduled three hours apart, at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm. The sales spiel takes two and a half hours. Yes. If you let a Tri-star salesman in your house, you are stuck for over two and a half hours. And they are persistent and tenacious devils. They will stick around until they finish their entire sales pitch.

The sales pitch is so long, it only leaves 30 minutes to get to the next appointment regardless of what part of town it’s in. If you sell a machine, the customer gets the one you were using so when you leave, you have to go back to the office to get another machine and then get to your next sales appointment. It just can’t happen that fast unless your sales call is 5 minutes from the office.

Realistically speaking, it is impossible to make four sales calls a day. And those sales calls are dependent on the office people doing their jobs of getting you appointments. If they screw up, you are screwed.

Besides being long, the sales calls are high pressure. If you can’t make the sale, you call the office manager who talks to the people and gives them more sales talk. I found the whole thing uncomfortable. I thought I would get used to it though.

Here’s how they make a lot of money.

When you are in training, your first sales calls are “practice calls” to friends or family. And their reward for their kindness in letting you practice on them is to be subjected to the high pressure phone call with the office manager.

I had two practice calls. The first was with my parents who patiently let me do my talk as I cleaned up the den. They did not buy a machine. I wouldn’t let them. They talked to my manager and politely declined his sales pitch. He spoke with me afterwards and asked me how I couldn’t even sell a machine to my parents. When I told him I was planning on selling five and giving them the free one, he looked disgusted.

My second sales call was to a married couple I was friends with. They were not rich but they had two German Shepherds. In my demonstration I sucked up enough fur to make a puppy from carpeting they had just vacuumed with their Hoover. They were sold. The machine practically sold itself. I knew they weren’t rich and I practically begged them to not buy it but they had to have it. So I had to sell it to them.

Because I made a sale, I got to attend the next sales meeting. At that meeting, I met everyone who had sold a machine. Out of about 15 people there, 10 were from my training class that had just concluded a few days earlier. A couple had sold two already. Four people were from the class from the week before mine. And one person was from the class two weeks before mine. I don’t think they ever had give a free machine to any sales person. And if they did have to give one away, it was no big deal. That $2000 machine probably costs them under $200 to make.

When I saw no “old timers” among us, I saw the pattern and I understood the Tri-Star business model. Instead of just looking for qualified leads, they hired people whose practice sales calls would yield enough sales to make the weekly training sessions profitable for the company. It was sneaky, smarmy and exploited the weaknesses of the unemployed but it was also kind of brilliant.

They expected a huge turnover of salespeople and they were more than OK with that. The more people they trained, the more machines they sold to people who didn’t even know they wanted a new vacuum cleaner.

Upon seeing that no sales person lasted long in this company, I turned in my resignation. I wasn’t going to bust my ass any longer on what was obviously a road to futility. I didn’t make much money but I learned a lot about vacuum cleaners and shady business practices.

I had my suspicions about this whole affair from the get go. The job interview took place after a 60 minute presentation given by the office manager. During that whole time, he never once told us what we would be selling.

The job interview was on a Tuesday. The next day started our three day job training for which we did not get paid. Finally on that first day, we were told what we would be selling but it wasn’t until Friday when they told us how much these things cost.

Even though they called it a cleaning system, everything we compared it to was a vacuum cleaner. We were taught how much better our cleaning system was over various vacuum cleaners. But we weren’t allowed to call it a vacuum cleaner even though it was one.

After three days of training, they finally revealed the price to us, $1999. Two thousand for a vacuum cleaner? We all thought that was nuts. But it wasn’t a vacuum cleaner. It was a cleaning system. Most of us had googled this “cleaning system” after the first day and we knew how much it cost. We weren’t surprised. We were still shocked the trainer could say it with a straight face.

The Tri-Star is a combination of vacuum technology. The air flows up the hose to a chamber in the canister. The airflow inside this canister is cyclonic like the popular Dyson machines. But it had a disposable paper basket to store the dust and dirt so it was sort of like a bagged machine. The cyclonic action kept the dust from clogging up the paper though so it had that over a traditional bagged machine. The paper dust receptacle was like a large cup so it wasn’t even closed like a bag. It was easy to dump out and re-use as many people do.

All in all, the Tri-star is a great unit if you like canister vacuums but is it worth $2000? Eh, no.

The Hoover vacuum cleaner I had been using for more than twenty years just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Over the years, it had become inordinately loud and it made the carpeting look worse.

Thus began my search for a new vacuum. I tend to overanalyze everything and this was no exception.  I consulted with Consumer Reports. I asked my friends for advice. I googled like crazy.  I watched countless infomercials. (It’s amazing how many infomercials are about floor cleaning.) And I went to every store in town, sometimes more than once, talking to salesmen of varying degrees of product knowledge, trying to find the best vacuums and the best deals.

A lot has changed since the last vacuum was purchased. We now have bagged or bagless vacuums.  It seemed as though making a choice between the two was probably going to be the most crucial part of deciding what vacuum cleaner to buy.

The advantage of traditional bagged vacuum cleaners is that they are somewhat easier to work with. Emptying the bag is the only real regular maintenance you need to do with them. When the bag fills up, you change it.

The advantage of bagless vacuums is that there is no bag.  Bags can be expensive and bags are sometimes difficult to find in the stores. Finding bags for the twenty some year old Hoover I was discarding was becoming a problem.

The disadvantage of bagged vacuums is that the more filled the bag gets, the more suction it loses. It’s not a linear progression either. The fuller the bag doesn’t mean the worse the suction. The suction gets pretty sucky very early in the bag filling process. When the bag is maybe an eighth full, you’ve lost way more than one eighth of your suction.

The disadvantage of bagless is that there are filters that need to be changed every so often. This will cut down on your suction and increase your operating cost.  In comparing the cost of the bags with the cost of the replacement filters, I found the yearly costs are comparable.  You only have to change the filters once but they are expensive enough to equal the cost of a year’s worth of bags.

A bagless vacuum needs to be emptied often, sometimes after each use. Changing a bag is done every few months, for most users, which makes them easier to use. Allergy sufferers are often told to use bagged vacuums because emptying bagless vacuums tends to release a lot of dust into the air.

The plusses and minuses of each style were pretty equal. Good vacuums can be found with each style. Making the decision can almost be a coin toss. As long as you don’t go too cheap, and even sometime when you do, you aren’t likely to find a truly bad vacuum cleaner.

I used to listen to classical music when I worked in a cubicle in an office. Except for the occasional inane and interminable meeting, we were left to our own devices. As long we did what we were supposed to do, we could do pretty much anything else we wanted. My music relaxed me and helped keep the boredom at bay.

My headphones reduced noise through passive noise reduction. They used sound absorbing materials to dampen outside noise. There are no electronics involved. This means no extra batteries. It also means I look like a member of the space patrol. Yes, I mean that there are two giant black cups on my ears. Not an easy look to carry off, I assure you. Women don’t flock to guys wearing giant black headphones on their heads, at least not th ewomen you’d like to have flock to you. 

Another great thing about them is I got what I like to call sweaty ear. Yep, those leather lined cups made my ears sweat after an hour or so. You also need to take a break because the fit is a little tight. When I say tight, I mean the cups pressed firmly against your head to maintain a good acoustic seal. This can give you a headache after a while. All these drawbacks aside, I loved those giant headphones because the sound was incredible, the bass astounding, and most of the outside noise was dampened. The noise dampening allowed me to keep the music volume fairly low which probably saved my hearing.

Noise reducing headphones also come in much smaller sizes. I found earbuds that have fairly large cushions. These earbuds are especially designed to mute external sound. They are small, sound great, and are very subtle. The drawback is they are really picky about placement in the ear for best sound and noise reduction.

Whether you choose the larger headphones or the smaller ear buds, noise reducing headphones can make your days go faster and your work seem less mind deadening.

Sound proof headphones  come in two major styles, active noise cancellation units and passive units. The active noise cancellation headphones use noise canceling technology which requires its own power supply, usually one or two AA batteries. They have a microphone on the outside of the headphones which monitors the noise. This noise is fed to a small amplifier and it creates the exact opposite noise to what is going on outside. This “opposite” noise is fed into the headphones and the net effect is silence. The silence comes because the two sources of noise cancel each other out when they reach your ears.

These type of headphones have two major disadvantages, the first being price and the second is the requirement for batteries to power the noise canceling circuitry. Some of them also don’t work all that well. You should try the headphones at the store before buying. Hopefully it will be a pretty noisy store.

The passive type of sound proof headphones uses sound absorbing technology. This comes in the form of various sound dampening materials to isolate your ears from the outside. The ear cups typically fit all around the ear, surrounding it completely. This method can be very effective.

The first disadvantages of this approach is the headphones tend to be heavy. Second, the rubber surround on the ear cups has to fit well, so pressure needs to be applied. This can cause ear fatigue. Another potential problem is that you tend to sweat on the rubber surround. Last, but not least, these headphones are anything but inconspicuous, so if you are a commuter, prepare for some odd looks here and there. If you wear glasses, the pressure on and around your ear can make your glasses dig into the side of your head.

Be sure to try on your headphones before you buy them.  They are like pants; you need to know they fit before you commit to them.

Some models have discrete drivers for all the components of a full surround system. There’s a  center speaker for dialog.  You have front speakers which output the normal stereo sound we are accustomed to hearing. Then you have two rear speakers for the surround sound. Finally, you have a dedicated subwoofer for the lowest bass sounds.

In some newer model headphones, all those speakers are actually present inside those large ear cups. If you take the cover off the headphones, you will see a center driver, a front driver, a surround driver and a sub driver. All these drivers are spaced apart so you get enough of a separation of sound to mimic the sound coming from a home theater loudspeaker system.

Do these surround sound headphones actually work? Yes, according to reviews. They are very popular because they actually work very well. A downside is that they are pretty heavy, though.

To round out the package, most headphones come with a multi-channel usb audio adapter. This adapter plugs into your usb port and drives all the channels of the surround headset.

If you do any gaming on your PC, surround sound headphones are a worthy investment.    Most gamers make do with a two speaker rig.  If you have a good set of headphones that have surround sound, your enemy is in real trouble. You will be able to hear them coming from a mile away and you’ll know exactly where they are coming from.

These headphones are not for everybody as they can be a bit bulky and heavy, especially the ones with all the electronics in the headsets themselves. The effect is so uncanny, don’t be surprised if the other players accuse you of cheating. Is it cheating to be using every available technology advance to our advantage? I certainly don’t think so and neither should you.

Noise cancellation headphones are perfect to address our ever increasingly noisy world. Now all you have to do is flick a switch on the headphones and suddenly all goes quiet. Now you can listen to your favorite music unaffected by extraneous noises.

That is the theory, the real world does not always follow suit. There are good and not so good noise cancellation headphones. The not so good ones sound terrible and only mute the outside noise a little and eat up batteries. To be successful at canceling noise, everything must be in order. The lower the quality on any one component, the less effective the noise reduction will be.

The headset has a small circuit inside which samples outside noise. It then creates the exact opposite noise and plays it through the headphones along with the music. The noise from the outside plus the sound injected from the noise canceling circuit will cancel each other out at your ear resulting in music without the noise.  How successful this is in practice varies wildly with different headsets.

Another point worth mentioning is that high price doesn’t always mean better performance. Some very high priced headphones are simply terrible at noise reduction. You really have to put a set on and try them out before buying. This task is best done in a store, not trying out and sending back every headset in a catalog online.

When evaluating noise cancellation headphones, note the estimated battery life. If you are getting less than 20 hours or so on a single set of batteries, you are going to need a lot of batteries. If the headphones you prefer are a battery eater,  rechargeable batteries are a good investment.

Despite their claims, super bass headphones  get lukewarm bass at best. They just don’t live up to their hype.  Those of us who love bass want headphones that can vibrate your face when playing. Do any headphones even do that?

Many headsets  designed for professional disc jockeys  have great bass. As we all know, DJ’s want serious bass just like they get from regular speaker systems.

When it comes to headphones, there are two ways to serious bass, go large or go tiny. Surprisingly, tiny earbud headphones can have terrific bass. The weird thing about them is that nobody hears a thing and to you, the bass is rattling your brain.

Really tiny earbud bass headphones work by doing two things. First they  isolate external noises.  The part that fits into your ear canal is made of a special cellular foam which is very sound absorbent as well as springy so it molds precisely to the inside of your ear. This airtight seal  insures the tiny vibrations produced by these earbuds is heard by your ears as very loud sound. Because of the geometry and their proximity to your ear, not much movement is needed from the diaphragm of the drivers to produce this loud volume. As a result, the sound is not distorted as it might be with traditional speakers.  Since you also won’t be able to hear yourself speaking with these, you will most definitely be yelling if someone asks you a question.

On the other side of the spectrum are the very large bass headphones.  Typically, they are over the ear headphones and seal out noise by covering and isolating the entire ear. The diaphragms of these headsets are very large. They produce heavy bass relatively easily.

The downside is they are not very subtle. Wearing them to work can be a problem if you are trying to not be noticed.   They stick out like a sore thumb.  They are also heavy so your ears might get a little tired after a while because of the cups pressing on the side of your head all day long. Wearing them while you exercise isn’t easy either unless your excersise routine consists of sitting down and staying put.

One of the wonderful benefits of  wireless headsets is the absence of wires and the freedom to roam your house and take your music with you.  A small trade-off here is that you need batteries to power the headphones. Get yourself two sets of rechargeables  and you won’t have to think about this issue ever again.

Wireless headphones use a few different technologies.  Some versions  use light to transmit the sound. These are called IR headphones, the IR stands for infrared light. The problem with these is that they only work where the light from the transmitter is in the line of sight of the headphones. That means they only work  in that one room.  For total freedom, you need to use radio waves.

 Some RF headphones are bluetooth compatible. If your laptop or notebook has a bluetooth wireless adapter in it, you will be able to connect to your computer and listen to music with your wireless headphones. Usually you find bluetooth compatibility in cellular phones. Your telephone headset is usually powered by bluetooth. This does not mean the technology can’t be used for music. The range is certainly sufficient.

For freedom of range and motion, nothing beats a good set of RF headphones. You can take them outside  and listen to your favorite music outside while enjoying the sun or working in the yard. You can use them outside while gardening or simply relaxing on your favorite chair. You want to exercise outside and listen to music? No problem. Once you get used to the freedom of walking and doing things in and around your house without wires, you’ll think of tons of activities you can do better with music.