Anyone here have experience with different brands of lawn vacuums?
After 3 years of living with the fall deluge from our beautiful trees
(1.2 acre lot, half of it deep woods), I really want to get a lawn
vacuum to help deal with it. Especially something that can deal with
sycamore leaves and honey-locust seed pods.

Lowes has a Troy-Bilt that looks nice. The Troy-Bilt is 24" with a
1.5" chipper/shredder attachment, plus has a detachable hose for
sucking up stuff. They want $499 for it. I lust after the Bearcat that
we saw at a home show last year, but for $4900 it better not just
shred leaves - it should also run by itself and serve me drinks as I
lounge in my beautiful leaf-free yard.

The chipper feature is nice, but I'm sure that we shouldn't
concentrate on that feature. If we really want to chip stuff, we'd
rent a big unit to do that. I see the chipper is just a handy thing to
handle the sticks that accumulate. Should we concentrate on
horsepower, or will 5.5 HP be plenty to handle most everything? Any
other particular features we should look for?

We have a true mulching mower, so bagging with a bagless mower is an
impossibility unless my DH wants to get some welding tools and cut a
hole in it :-)

Sharon