I use the Reber vacuum packer for all my spice mixes and casings, they are excellent value, I always wanted a vacuum packer but I could only find commercial ones at around �1000.
The one drawback with the reber and other home packers is that they use a different sort of bag to the commercial ones. The bags have ridges on one side of the sleeve which acts as a sort of drain for the air without sucking out the contents. the only thing that the reber struggles with is liquids (as I found out when I tried to pack some soup!!) For all other products it has become indispensable in my house.
The bags cost around 10p each which is around double the price of standard vacuum bags. I have tried it with standard bags and it jsut seals them and soesn't suck out.
On the whole it is a good piece of kit.
This is a table in Italian that compares the lenght of time products last with or without vacuum sealing..
http://www.reber-snc.it/tabella.htmFranco