Cleaning the living room carpet with an Oreck XL Classic upright vacuum after making a drywall mess when replacing the electrical box for the ceiling fan.

This machine is nearly 20 years old. It was recently serviced and is in excellent working order. Despite all the negative commentary people make about these machines, for the weight, size, and power drawn, the performance truly is 'Simply Amazing'. It cleaned the mess with ease, leaving the carpet looking like new.

For the sake of not being bias, I will admit that these machines are unreasonably loud, in fact the unit is so excessively loud that I typically opt to use the protective ears during operation. It's also worth noting that the filtration for type of dirt is not very thorough, but it's unreasonable to expect any standard household vacuum to be able to filter out particles as fine as drywall dust.