Cool and geek-friendly: man's new best friend

Net Results: The first hint about what is really going on with Dyson vacuum cleaners comes ithe user manual. There's a silhouette drawing of a person vacuuming. A man, writes Karlin Lillington.

Next come several pages of diagrams of the vacuum cleaner's parts, and then instructions on how to put them together. These are rendered in a kind of simplified but precise engineer's drawings, and remind me a lot of those how-to drawings that come with plastic models of airplanes and ships.

I spent a lot of time putting together those model kits as a child because my brothers routinely received them as birthday presents and had absolutely no patience or interest in doing so. I had both, and loved all the little plastic parts that had to be carefully glued into place.

Little tiny Spitfires! Miniature aircraft carriers! I loved them all. I'd put them together and give them back to my brothers once completed, still in their original grey plastic, as my parents wouldn't pay for the model paints.

Why is this relevant to a discussion of the Dyson? Because it forms the subtext for the Dyson strategy - or at least one element of its wily marketing ploy. And that would be? Go after men, and go for the geeks, male or female. Entice them by making your household cleaning tool a surrogate techno-toy.

Well, it's not even surrogate. There's some amazing technology behind the Dyson and its bagless vacuums. But it is how they sell the vacuum cleaner and its technology that is unusual and worthy of deconstruction.

Let's start with the website. Go to www.dyson.co.uk - is it ever geek-and-guy-friendly? Guys! No need to feel you are doing the cleaning. Instead, you are going to use a precision tool based on the concepts of the Dyson Cyclone (trademark), the Dyson Airblade (trademark), and the one I especially like - the Contrarotator (trademark).

The last sounds like the villain Arnold Schwarzeneggar will face off against in his next film (when he gets bored with politics, that is).

Once you are satisfied with the coolness of these ideas, and that none indicates you will be doing anything as dull as schlepping a vacuum cleaner around the house in pursuit of crumbs and dog hair, let us next view the products.

Now these ARE cool. They are lined up in a shiny yellow and translucent plastic miniature row, against a trendy black background.

Select your vehicle - oops I mean vacuum - and you get a little model of the machine. You can rotate it and view it in 3D! And you can enlarge it and rotate and view it some more! Its features are all described in non-girly language. Take the DC-14 (the names are all great - reminiscent of jet planes or sports cars).

The main handle part of the Dyson is the "telescopic reach". It has a "large debris channel" (the vacuum head to you and me). The specs highlight the clear bin (this is a key selling point for guys/geeks - but I will return to it). It has a "motorised" and "anti-jam brushbar". It has "edge-cleaning whiskers". And of course, the Dyson comes with "airflow tools" (those little brush add-ons). At the end of each model's feature list you can click into - how satisfying! - the "technical specifications".

There is nothing here, not a single term or phrase, that a guy couldn't discuss down at the pub of an evening and keep his manly reputation intact. Or that wouldn't delight a technology-loving geek.

Reader, I bought one.

But not until I had read through dozens of reviews on sites like Amazon, which only confirmed my suspicions. Loads of the reviews were by men. Not fussy houseproud Felix Ungers, but Real Men who described unpacking, putting together, then vacuuming with their Dyson in the same terms they would describe their experiences with power tools or a new car.

When I got my new Dyson home and opened the box, I could see the appeal. First you have to put your vacuum together using the engineering diagrams - how fun is that? Then, that telescoping reach is way cool! Indeed it is like a giant silver and purple bazooka that snaps into the desired length with a series of deeply satisfying clicks.

There are bits you can push in or out to make the turbo head batter up hair from the carpet in a very interesting and efficient way - then watch it get sucked right in the clear plastic "large debris channel". And there is that see-through canister where you can thrill as a dustbunny, slurped in microseconds before, pops out into a growing mass of grey yuck with a nice sloop sound.

And this has to be what gets the guys in particular: reawakening dormant boyhood pleasures of looking at gross stuff. You get to unsnap the clear canister, admire its appalling hairbound contents (and your industry in getting them there), and then empty it into the bin in a mild cloud of grey dust.

Women, here's the Dyson secret: buy one and the guys will not only do the vacuuming but adore their power tool to boot.

And if you're a geek? Highly recommended. A Dyson might be expensive, but it is a godsend for a house full of cats and dogs. And I have never had so much fun vacuuming in my life.

klillington@irish-times.ie

www.techno-culture.com