Also look into electrolux vacums my mother and have a old 1964 vacum that just died recently after 10 years of use, but the dog blasted thing worked beautifully sucked anything and kept the rugs and carpet clean for nearly 3 weeks of each month.
Since electro has a new lineup test one of them and see you like them, we did a test run at sears in the store and it did better than kenmore.
The pricing was a bit much back in late 2009 though.....