If you need to remove paint from a house, barn or old garage, buy this thing before you start. It does an excellent job without marring the work surface. Considering the amount of effort it saves (esp. over using a scraper), it's dirt cheap. It's also very durable (I've had mine 7+ years). I only wish their orbital sanders held up this well. With a coarse grit sanding disk you can quickly and easily take an old painted surface down to bare wood. I learned about the tool from a house painter who told me it was invaluable. One warning though, be sure to use the side handle that comes with it. It runs at high speed and if you're using it in only one hand, it can get away from you if the disk gets wedged in a crack or caught between two boards. The bottom line is, unless you really enjoy scraping paint (in which case you're a little weird), you'll want this tool - it's a MAJOR labor saver.

Borrowed one of these (then bought one) and used to grind out an old floor that was glassed into a '65 fiberglass runabout. Was super fast and the control was amazing. Loved how light and powerful this little dynamo is.

This is the least expensive, best designed tool for prep work available. It's very tough, light weight so it's easy to use, and best of all it takes 5" center hole sanding disks. They are cheep, come in a very wide varity of grits and can be found at any big box store, hardware store, paint store, ect.
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br /That was true up until August of "06. Now 3M, Norton and others appear to have discontinued the product, rendering to tool useless. 3M, Makita and others are you listning? We need out paper back.