boorite wrote:

I would like to meet the marketing people who expect me to believe that
a 16-gallon ShopVac is 4 times more powerful than a $500 contractor's
saw,

If you're measuring electrical input power, then I've got a 4
horsepower kitchen toaster, and that doesn't even move. If you allow
electricity wasted as heat into the calculation, then you can get some
perverse measurements. As vacuums move a lot of air that they also use
for cooling, they're usually designed to be woefully inefficient in the
search for cheap power. It might even _be_ mechanically quite powerful
- some of them are, despite their small size and weight.

My table saw is not only rated at 3HP, that's real 3HP at almost any
speed, without risk of burning out.