Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

before this unit, I had an off-brand $30 4" square pad sander that I used to polish the intake manifold on my car. It burned out after probably less than 40 hours of use. I bought this sander as a replacement when I bought a house and decided to refinish the wood floors. I rented a drum sander to remove the bulk of the old finish, but I had to trace around the edge of all the rooms to remove the material. I bought this sander for $69 at Lowes and about 20 sheets of 40 grit paper, and this little sucker hummed away for hours and knocked out all the excess finish. After about a week of walking over the exposed wood, painting walls, and moving scaffolding, I had to do a once-over on the wood to clean it up. I hit the whole floor (about 500 sq. ft.) with 60 grit, then did it again with 100 grit. This little sander cleaned it up beautifully, and I was surprised that it ran under heavy cyclic loading for about 5 hours without a hiccup. My knees didn't do as well. I'm glad I bought it and expect that it will withstand many more hours of continued abuse. Edit 7/15/2011: So I've owned this sander since October of 2006, and I'm happy to say that it has had years of heavy use now. I just refinished my kitchen floor with it! I used a vacuum adapter to connect it to my shop vac as I was reluctant to pull a drum sander into the small space. Kitchen is about 150 ft^2, it did wonderfully well, and I minimized the dust with the shop vac attachment. Very happy with this sander.