Sophie, A suction-only canister is a good choice, since you will not have to worry about the deeply-embedded dirt, in carpeting. Also, an upright takes alittle more time to push around compared to pushing a floor brush around. I will run down some Midsize and compact canisters for you, from most expensive to cheapest. Take a look at Simplicity Jack or its sister, the Riccar Moonlight. These two Tacony Corporation brands are only available through vac shops. Also take a look at Walmart's GE canister with power nozzle. The vacuum cleaner comes with alot of attachments including a natural hair floor brush. The power nozzle does not need to be used until you get some carpeting. It comes at a really good price of approximately $155. It is a really good vacuum cleaner for what you want it for. Look at your local Walmarts. They may not be in every store. The model number is 169072. Another suggestion would be the Sanitaire Commercial 3683. This will be the smallest of the compact canisters, but powerful for you. The only drawback is that this might not do well for you in your carpetless apt.--loud. You should find this vacuum for around $100. Lastly, the Kenmore Magic Blue is a very good compact canister from Sears, made by LG. The MB will have the smallest bag capacity, but it will hold alot. All of these will do well at filtration.

You'll think I'm crazy but, I use a small Rigid shop vac. It has a cord that's longer than most regular vacuums, a convenient floor canister design with good rollers, loads of power and a long hose. I just use a hard surface floor attachment (a wide thing with short bristles on the bottom) and it works better than anything else I've used. The upfront cost was a lot less than a regular vacuum too - I think it came out to about $100. They're bagless and HEPA filters are optional (I think about $35?). I should add, it's lightweight and a 3 piece adapter made it possible to connect to all the brushes and other tools I already owned from another vac. This post was edited by schicksal on Wed, Jun 4, 14 at 6:50

We have over 2500 s.f. of hardwood in our home. I can't imagine the amount of Swiffer sheets I would need to use to clean my floor. For light dusting, I use a wide dust mop (sold in janitorial stores) -- it's probably about 3 feet wide and breezes through my floors. For more through cleaning, I use my central vac with the hardwood floor brush. Since we have a dog that loves to get little pawprints or water drips from her bowl all over the place, I periodically use a damp mop with only a couple drops of dish detergent in the bucket. I do a small area, then immediately dry thoroughly with large towel. I never use Murphy's. I would be very hesitant to use a vacuum because dirt gets embedded on the wheels and the weight of the vacuum along with that dirt may scratch the surface.

I've been using a Kenmore canister for about five years now on our all hard surface (plus two area rugs) house. I remember thinking $200 was crazy to spend on a vacuum. Ha! I think our house would be a great place to test drive vacuums. We have two Newfoundland dogs (so that's about 270 pounds of dog ... most of it fur) and live 500 feet from the beach so there is always sand around. Frankly I'm impressed the Kenmore still even runs. But it's definitely slowing down. I can vacuum the rugs and still "scrape" off hair with the bottom of my shoe. Because I know a lot of people with Newfoundlands, vacuums are a big topic. I know several people with Dyson who have an unnatural love for them for the first year or so, but as they age (the vacuums, not the people) I'm hearing more complaints. I've definitely heard more complaints about the Dyson canisters than the uprights, but plenty of those too. The Rainbows are pretty much held to be the gold standard and most people I know bought them used. For me, I think a Miele is probably going to be my next vacuum.