vacuum for pet hair!

I am looking for recommendations for an affordable (read: NOT Dyson) vacuum that does a great job of picking up pet hair.

I currently have a Bissell upright that used to do a great job, but I have had it for about 2-3 years and it is just not working as well. It seems the dog hair is getting stuck in the top part and will not drop down into the canister.

Looking for one goof on carpet. Don't care so much about tile because I don't have a lot and I just Swiffer it.

So... what do you recommend? Less than $200 would be great!

Thanks Candkids reply and link.

I'll buy Riccar commercial upright (looks like the Riccar 8925 Premier Commercial Series Upright Vacuum but is an earlier one that cost about $600 at the time), and my mother has a Simplicity upright, which is similar design but a household model. Both are quite adequate. I also use a $30 6-gallon(?) ShopVac for sweeping up cat litter and other debris. If I remember, the Riccar I have, the dirt doesn't go through the fan. That's important if you are sweeping up grits like cat litter, because that will tear up a fan. Before the Riccar, I owned a Hoover $450 (bought in 1995) self-propelled sweeper that worked great, except you could no longer get parts for it and the brush roller was worn out and the fan had been knicked by debris and was noisy. I chose the Ricccar for its construction and simplicity.

http://kcvacuums.com/shop/riccar-8900/ can be bought for around $600 now, but the one like I have is over $700 now. Yikes!

You might look at Simplicity and Panasonic for affordability. Really, that $30 or $35 ShopVac from Lowes plus a $40 or $50 Bissel from Walmart would probably do ya, if you wanted really inexpensive. The ShopVac will get all the loose dirt, but you need a brush roller to get the hair. But a decent brush roller on a cheap vac will probably do that. I put a drywall bag in the ShopVac. It contains all dust. I rarely have to vac up any water, so I just set it up for optimum dust collection.

Totally recommend the Shark.

If you do the trial through the T.V shop, you can talk them down to $250.

I went in to buy a fancy new vacuum cleaner for our cat hair problem and the guy at Godfrey's recommended I just buy the special head and use it for our existing vacuum cleaner as the suction was the same as the fancy one. The special head was a universal one and only cost me about $15. It works great! So ask about that rather than buying a whole new vacuum. Turns out that head bit was the only difference between my vacuum and the fancy one anyway!