They've "tweeked" the eggs a little since then. No shop vac required! It takes about 5 minutes to get the coals going (we've got an electric starter for ours) and about another 5 minutes after that to get up to steak cooking temps. We got ours in March...so far we've made a whole chicken, ribs, grilled pineapple, steaks, fish, shrimp, burgers, and this weekend I'm probably going to make some cookies on it so I don't have to heat up our kitchen. We'll probably end up doing our turkey on it this year in November too.