When I was single I had some divided plates with a vacuum port on the lids. I had 30 or so of them. I could spend an afternoon cooking once a week or so, making half a dozen different meals, then divvy everything up and toss them into the fridge or freezer. Essentially I was making my own tv dinners, using the vacuum sealer.
Now we use the vacuum sealer mostly for meat and veggies going into the freezer. My wife hates looking at it on the counter so it's usually stashed away and not worth digging out just for a bag of chips. Definitely a tool that you need to have set up and ready to go if you want to maximize your usage.
Well, I tried out my $6 Black & Decker vacuum sealer, next to my Food Saver. The B&D was a total POS. It would not seal the bags properly. I tried it with the bags that it came with and with genuine Food Saver bags. NFG. I'm still good on my $6 purchase, as the roll of bags and the mason jar attachment were worth multiples of that. The B&D goes in the trash tomorrow.
In reply to Dr. Hess :
Would it be possible to adapt it to a bleeder for doing brake bleeds? 
In reply to hotsauce :
I think most of us have a broader definition of "man" than you do. For instance, I believe a truly manly man is not so insecure as to proclaim a kitchen oriented device off limits because of some perceived threat to his manhood.
In reply to EastCoastMojo :
Probably. Not worth the trouble, though, or the space it would take up in the shop somewhere. Total piece of E36 M3 compared to the Food Saver.
I figure the vacuum pump is only a fraction of the size of the whole unit, but can certainly see where it wouldn't be worth the hassle to extract it.
We own one but never use it anymore. We were wasting too much leaving stuff in the freezer for 2-3 years because it was easier to just grab it unthawed from the store after everyone forgot to set it in the fridge a day or two before.
We have a food savor, I hate it, but my wife loves it. It seems to only work for her. I really don't like all of the excessive kitchen appliances they try to sell us these days, I need a bigger kitchen to store them all. If it was up to me anything going into the freezer would just be in a ziplock bag. You can do a fairly good job of getting the air out of a ziplock bag using the edge of the counter. In reality there isn't a big enough discount to have more than a few weeks supply of anything.
I really don't like storing too much in the freezer because I come from a family of hoarders that don't know when to clean out items. Helped my parents clean out their storage room a few years back and found a few things that expired in the 90s. Buying in bulk can save money, but most times it ends up with extra food going to waste in my experience.
These are the reason I only allow my wife the room in the refrigerator freezer.
