My Festool order arrived today. If you weren't following my other thread, I decided on the ETS 150/3 sander and CT 22 vac.
Tonight I tried them out in my shop for the first time using the piece of 120 grit paper that came with the sander. I sanded a piece of walnut that has been acclimating in the shop after a couple passes through the planer on the high feed rate. Obviously it had some pretty heavy machining marks. I was shocked at how quickly the machining marks disappeared, and moreso that I could see them disappear. That's not something I've seen before, probably because of the dust left behind after sanding with my previous sanders. When I ran my hand over the sanded area, I picked up virtually no chalky dust as I would have before.
Next, I hooked the vac up to my Porter Cable circular saw and tried it with my EZ Smart system. Again, almost no dust vs a small cloud before with my Ridgid vac. The hose fit the PC connection perfectly with no need for adapters or tape.
Finally I grabbed one of my old 2-1/2" hoses and floor nozzle. They hooked right up to the vac and I found that it has a little less suction with that size hose as the Ridgid. It appears to have more suction than the Ridgid with the small hose, as evidenced by the circular saw test.
The only thing I see needing to work out is storage of the hose. One option may be to use the systainer that came with the sander to store the hose on the vac since that would probably be more convenient than having to store the hose elsewhere and keeping the sander on the vac. At least for now, I don't want to dish out $50 for a spare Systainer.
All in all, I am very happy and can say I'm now a Festool believer.