It depends...
I feel as though it depends on what type of bagless vacuum you are using. If your using something like an original Fantom, then bagless is the way to go. It amazes me how people say that they get dust clouds in their face with bagless, yet, I have only experienced this maybe 10 times over a 8 year period, when I vacuumed up a lot of dust, and I was in a rush to empty it, and didn't take the care to dump it to avoid the mess. Bagless vacuums don't last? Again, it depends on the model. Fantoms and Dysons seem to last a lot longer then other vacuums. My oldest Fantom is a 1994, so its going on 18-19 years old. Now, if your buying a new vacuum, rather than a used one, you would either probably want to buy a Dyson other than DC07-DC14, as the brush rolls on those stink. But if you don't want to go with a Dyson, either look at the Hoover Platinum Collection Multi-Cyclonic, which after owning since June, I can say is a good vacuum, but leaves a few things to be desired, or you should probably go bagged, I am not that high on anything else. I have not really used anything else, to be honest, but just based off of reading, and browsing at stores, I really don't get a good impression of a lot of current bagless vacuums. If I were to get a bagged vacuum, I would want to try to get a Miele S7 Tango, or something like that.