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I disagree with your point of view on the Dyson vacuums.

We have one of these Dyson ball vacuums. The ball is a gimmick, but as a vac for a small home it really is excellent.

Unfortunately for us the carpet brush in the head threw its bearing and damaged its plastic retaining clip. What I was quite impressed with was that I could go to their website and order a new brush, with bearing, and a new clip, for only GBP 15 delivered. They arrived in a few days, I could fit this myself, and the machine is now as good as new.

The modular design makes it serviceable and I really like that.

On top of this, I can clean the filters as often as I like. Hell, I can clean the entire machine as often as I like, since I can dismantle the entire vacuum pipeline and wash each plastic part in soapy water and let it dry. Such a service brings the machine right back to an as-new condition.

Others have posted that bag-less doesn't work so well. I have no metrics on the technology, but my anecdote is that you need to keep the bag-less system clean, which means dismantling the dust catcher and cleaning it thoroughly every few months.

Anyway, I've been a happy customer and am impressed with the quality and serviceability.

My guess is that they are talking about this model:

http://www.dyson.com/hand-drye...

which is the one I have seen around. I don't exactly have big hands, but I can't see how you would touch the unit to use it unless you have some advanced Parkinson's going on.

Musk's idea is much simpler - he just wants to offload his excessive battery cell inventory from the low Tesla sales to the stupid fans, not save the world.

Stupid fans? I thought those were a Dyson invention, not Tesla?

Because he already finished them.

He needs one of these:
http://www.dyson.com/Fans/FansAndHeaters/Fans.aspx
They're great for climate change.

Now, a new vacuum cleaner comes out but it is required to always be plugged into the wall and it will only work if it is connected to a service that costs me a monthly payment.

And of course, Microsoft makes a "vacuum cleaners need plugged in" analogy while not realizing they are getting "unplugged", so to speak. With these fancy new vacuum cleaners, you only need to "download" the electricity when you're not using it! It's almost as if being plugged in all the time is highly inconvenient.

They completely left out the notion of a Dyson Sphere

I wonder if that's because the target audience might confuse it with a brand of vacuum cleaner.

That's a relief. At first I thought you meant they were searching for alien Dyson Balls.

I heartily recommend you take a gander at one of these products.

Dyson (proper noun): Overrated bagless vacuum cleaner
http://www.dyson.com/homepage.asp

I don't know, ask Mr. Dyson?

My wife has the Dyson DC15. It is called The Ball. I really wanted that model because I first thought it was a sphere. :)

Which, in reply, I wish to direct you here, here, or even here. Or if unmanned robotic efforts are more your cup of tea, here (one of which just happens to be the subject for today here).

What, was somene not expecting a smart-ass reply to that?

She's got some set of ball. That's what.

Not Hoover, Dyson.

And since it doesn't lose suction, the dyson will continue pulling in the random detritus of our galaxy until its all cleaned up. Isn't that nice?

Packaging means a lot in the consumer market. Consider these non-geek products:

- Method soap. Clear, tear-dropped shaped bottles drive sales, consumers pay 20% for these products. Soap is soap.

- Iron City beer in Alum. "bottles". Same beer + different package = big sales increase. It's a can with a bottle cap!

- Oxo. Does the handle make that much difference to most users?

- Dyson. If it didn't look different, there's no way folks would be paying more for this product. I doubt a $500 vac works 5X better than a $100 product.

From what I've read, the lunar dust is incredibly hard on mechanical things (gears, seals, etc)...that would make maintenance of any lunar base very difficult, and prohibitively expensive.

I know that Dyson's cost a bit much, but I think it's going a bit overboard to call them "prohibitively expensive," especially for NASA.

The real economic factor that so many firms miss is that good design makes a profit. I'm talking about software design, product design, automobile design. Once an object loses its status as some unique category it becomes a commodity. Once it becomes a commodity people become more concerned with price. Design something really well and it gains in personal value and loses the stigma of commodity. Invest in design (and maybe use a real design firm like Apple does) and you will be rewarded for it.

Consider vacuum cleaners. They're a commodity. Everyone's got one. So how do sell a vacuum cleaner for $500 when anyone can get one for $100. Simple. Re-design it. Look at the reviews! People are swearing up and down that this Dyson vacuum cleaner is the best vacuum they've ever used. It's likely that Dyson won't take over the market. But it is likely that they will have a stable totally loyal users that will buy only that brand. Hmmm. Sound like anyone you know? (Of course it sounds like Apple, but were you also thinking Saturn? Google?)

It never ceases to amaze me when people claim that Apple is not important because they only have 4-5% of the market. They're not in the commodity business! BMW does not have more than 4-5% of the market. Neither will Dyson. Because they are not commodity firms. They are design firms (as in designer goods). Taking over huge amounts of the market by make cheap unattractive crap is not what they do.

To sum up:
1. Design
2. Profit!!!

Don't forget this business based off of really, really sucking.

their game there is pretty cool, too.

The dyson vacuum cleaner.

Seriously.

I know that I've gotten old because I've started salivating over things like vacuum cleaners. The thing I want most right now is a dyson. I also catch myself spending a substantial amount of time looking at washers and dryers in fry's. If I could only pinpoint the moment I stopped being cool.

These are poor imitations of the REAL bagless vacuum, the almighty Dyson. The first time I used mine, it pulled up two full bins of filth that my old Hoover had left in the carpet.

It filters out dirt by centrifugal motion in "cyclone" tubes. Unlike all other bagless vacs, there are no filters to replace. It has seals of approval from various allergy associations for its excellence in cleaning dust and other allergens out of the house.

It is easily the most excellent gadget I bought in the past year, and that's saying something, as I am a sucker for electronic crap. Plus it looks very cool and futuristic.

Any Slashdot reader who can afford it need only try it once, and he will be a customer for life.

-ccm

"He famously refused to employ graduates on the basis that they had been brainwashed and couldn't think for themselves any more."

Actually what James Dyson said indicates that it is the other way around:

"We employ a lot of graduates straight from university. The basic reason for this is that they are unsullied. They haven't been strapped into a suit and taught to think by a company with nothing on its mind but short-term profit and early retirement. We want people who are creative and courageous. And we have faith in their ability to make a difference".

Dyson Culture

Dyson Appliances CEO James Dyson

I went to a talk given by British invetor James Dyson (check out their Home Page) a few weeks back. He invented the "bagless vacuum cleaner" and one of his engineers' "inovations" was to have a clear case round the rubbish it sucked up. They thought it was cool. One of the most interested people in the design was Steve Jobs...The rest is history.

• http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/robotics/dyson_dc06.a sp
  
• http://www.fp.rdg.ac.uk/equal/AT/reki/REKIslides/R EKIADCttATS/sld018.htm
  
• http://www.thirdage.com/news/archive/991218-02.htm l
  
• And more on Google
  

hehe... the thought of putting it in an enclosed circle and watching it go round and round or simply blinking the "Im in trouble, a kitty is tring to eat me!" LED simply makes me laugh...

BTW - Everyone got the video, it's funny as hell (3.5MB though)

Yeah, and on the Two Speed System as well. Man they must have spent a lot of time on research coming up with the concept of a machine that can move to different speeds. How completely original and innovative! (remember, only difficulty of invention, not implementation, counts for a patent).

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

More importantly, how long before some enterprising cracker attempts to hack these things? In the future, when little robot vacuum cleaners become common and can sense when the floor is dirty and needs to be cleaned, will I see articles like the following:

--

NEW YORK (AP) -- In what authorities are calling "the worst attack by pro-clutter hackers yet," thousands of Dyson DC17 robot vacuum cleaners burned out today when a swarm of dirt-dumping robots was released into the city. The dirtbots, as the FBI is calling them, invaded homes and left trails of dirt across carpets. While the DC17s attempted to vacuum up the dirt, the dirtbots continued making tracks until the DC17s lost power or their motors burnt out....

--

Alternatively, given their Mood indicator light (patent pending), will these be to the next decade what mood rings were to the 70's?

Sargent

This is just a whole site of silly patent applications.

• Two-speed option - how can this possibly be new and inventive?
• A Spiral covers a rectangle - surely this has been done before. Lawnmovers spring to mind.
• Mood Indicator Light - nothing more that a three-colur status light: OK, working, problem. I'm sure I have seen somethng similar somewhere...

Arrrrrgh! (I still want one, though :-))

This is just a whole site of silly patent applications.

• Two-speed option - how can this possibly be new and inventive?
• A Spiral covers a rectangle - surely this has been done before. Lawnmovers spring to mind.
• Mood Indicator Light - nothing more that a three-colur status light: OK, working, problem. I'm sure I have seen somethng similar somewhere...

Arrrrrgh! (I still want one, though :-))

This is just a whole site of silly patent applications.

• Two-speed option - how can this possibly be new and inventive?
• A Spiral covers a rectangle - surely this has been done before. Lawnmovers spring to mind.
• Mood Indicator Light - nothing more that a three-colur status light: OK, working, problem. I'm sure I have seen somethng similar somewhere...

Arrrrrgh! (I still want one, though :-))

Scope it out... they have a patent pending on their "spiral cleaning path." Sorry dudes, but I think this is yet another stupid patent idea. Patently obvious and been done before.

It seems that they have applied for a patent on the spiral as a form that covers a rectangle. (See http://dc06.dyson.com/solution2.htm.

Sad.

Does anybody know what comouters and OS it uses? :-9