Bought this belt sander over a year ago.  Principal use has been to prepare sub-flooring for installation of 3/4" oak. That required removal of significant irregularities and this sander certainly ate up the high spots quickly.  Have also been using it to prepare the new unfinished oak surface for finishing.  Again, it is up to the task.  Yeah, I know renting a floor sander would make the job quicker, but I am doing the job in increments and find I can sand with this sander much faster than I could install the flooring in the first place. This machine produces little felt vibration and is well balanced and its ergonomic design let me use it with little fatigue.  I'm collecting the dust in a bucket under a dust deputy and am amazed how fast the bucket is filling up.  Some of the dust will be mixed with the urethane finish to use as filler in the narrow cracks between boards caused by uneven expansion/contraction of the wood.  I use Walkers Game ears for hearing aids and their sound compression feature advertised to reduce muzzle blast works to reduce the 84 dB sound of the sander.  It is comfortable to use and quickly smooths out irregularities.  I do not use the dust bag.  Shop vac pulls almost all the dust into the dust deputy and I have not yet had to clean the filter or empty the vac. It took a while to locate dust hose fittings to fit the dust port but I managed to cobble together a system that works.  My principal criticism of Makita and all other dust machine makers is that the dust collection hoses, and hose fittings are not standardized and the actual dimensions of such fittings are almost never given.  I would love to see it mandatory that all such product descriptions include an accurate inside diameter and outside diameter of the fitting.  Looks to me like this field is an opportunity for pvc pipe fitting manufacturers to expand their market by offering pvc pipe fittings that would fit dust ports on all dust collecting products.