It's interesting you mention Dyson. I must confess I've always been a bit of a fan. I think their older, mains-powered upright cleaners are brilliant and as the owner of a long haired cat and someone who also recorded one of the highest results ever seen by the local hospital for allergy to house dust when my eczema was tested, I appreciate their cleaning abilities and ferocious suck! I have a DC-07 and a DC-14 and they perform superbly and parts are cheap, plentiful and easy to fit when they are required.
However my recent experience with their HD-01 Supersonic hairdryer has royally pissed me off. It is my wife's and is around 5 years old and last year it began cutting in and out as you wave it around. Now given that I have had to re-terminate the mains leads into the above vacuums a number of times, as they perish where they enter the machines, this is most likely the problem.
However, I was shocked to learn recently that the item is no longer supported by Dyson, repair shops won't touch them as they can't get spares and Dyson could offer me no service information. Never mind, I'm an engineer - I'll have a crack at it myself. However, looking at a "tear-down" video of one on the web, it appears that to take it apart, you have to break it (although, I'm obviously still going to give it a go when I get 5 minutes). What a crap piece of design (or an ingenious one, if you're a conspiracy theorist like Marco! )
My email to the UK CEO of Dyson was ignored and so, I'm afraid they have lost me as a customer, although I think they had anyway given their move to battery-operated vacuum cleaners. Our friends have one and it's crap. Definitely a perfect example of newer not being better.