It's huge
I picked up this dust collector when it was on sale for a ridiculous price here at amazon. And I'm glad I did. I replaced my old delta 1100cfm 1.5hp dust collector. I was never very happy with that one, especially once I ran ducts around the shop. So far, I haven't been able to hook up a proper network to this one, so I'm using flexible hose everywhere. I'm certain this beast will have no trouble handling whatever network I put together.

Let me start by saying it's big. I mean really huge. I have 10 foot ceilings in my garage/shop and it barely fits. If you look at the picture, I'm 6'5" and I'm eye-level with the delta symbols on the bags. They're real felt bags. I'm amazed they can pass that much air through them. They don't even inflate all the way.

There's a 10" opening on top. It comes with a manifold that breaks that into four 5" openings. I picked up a reducer to bring one of them down to 4". It pulls so hard I have nightmares about getting my arm sucked into the hose.

Pros:
It's extremely powerful

The felt bags are high quality 1-micron bags

You can install the center section upside down if you want the port to be on the bottom.

The bags are held on with these cool hoops that fit into the openings on the body like snap-rings. They're a lot easier to use than the belt buckle style. And they include the belt buckle style anyway if you prefer those.

In spite of it's size, it's still on casters.

Magnetic starter.

You'll never need to upgrade your DC again.

Cons:

It's big. This sucker is tall and takes up about the same floor space as my grizzly dj-20 clone. maybe a little more. And it's tall. You could save a few inches by not installing the casters. But it still needs a 10' or 11' ceiling.

It's loud. Loud enough to wake the dead. It's not a screaming banshee noise like a shop vac. More like a 100 mile per hour wind type of noise. It's not annoying though.

The manual sucks in the typical delta way. This really caused me problems because...

The starter is a pain to hook up. It doesn't come with a power cord or connector. You have to figure out from the bad black and white photo how to hook it up. I got it wrong the first time and popped the breaker. No harm done luckily.

The manual goes on and on about how you must correctly ground the machine, then doesn't provide a separate ground in the switch box. I guess they mean the neutral wire? :-P

The manual tells you to get an electrician to install it. They also tell you to hard-wire it into the sub panel for some bizarre reason. Let me get this straight, it's on casters so i can move it around, but I have to hard-wire it into the box?

Because it's a five horse motor, it won't work with after-market remote starters. Grizzly has a 5hp starter that's included with one of their big dust collectors. You can order the parts from them and figure out how to make it work. I haven't gotten around to that yet.

It's heavy. I'm a weight-lifter and often assemble machines alone even when they say to get help. It's usually just not a big deal for me. For this one, it's a big deal. Get help.

And lastly, it's not a cyclone. I plan to make a large trashcan style separator. I may even hook it up to a clearvue cyclone if I want to consume even more floor space.

In spite of all of this, I'd buy it again even at twice the silly price I paid. It's a beast that can easily handle an entire shop with several machines running.

Delta 50-765 5 Horsepower 4-Bag 4,800 CFM Dust Collector, 230-Volt 1 Phase
Sorry, but I haven't even opened the box yet. In process of building a wood shop and bought the dust collector early because of the excellent Amazon price.

I'm sure I will like it from what I have read.


Update Sept 2007
I now have my shop built and have my dust collector attached to my two most dust/chip producing tools, 16" sander and thickness plainer. Once I get my interior walls up, I will run it all around my shop. It works great but of course with something with this much power it is pretty noisy. This is a temporary problem because I plan on putting up a partion in my 30 x 60 building, half being woodshop, and will be putting the dust collector outside of my woodshop. Putting the dust collector together was pretty simple, but it does take 2 people. Wiring was also real simple. Good directions. Thanks for the great deal on a great piece of equipment.