I have been meening to buy one of those. I actually recently found an interesting technique for de soldering especially tricky joints, e.g. ICs, LEDs (damn you square pads). If you have a compressor you can actually heat up the joint with an iron in your right hand and then blast a bit of air onto it. The solder gets blown off the joint completely leaving no tricky residue or anything around the pin. Of course that solder has to go somewhere (generally it splatters right next to the pad) but you can easily clean it up by quickly running the iron over the mess and having it wisk onto it.
I found for through-hole parts you can actually hold the board vertically, and heat the solder from one side and suck through from the other rather than holding the sucker next to the iron and trying to suck the solder sideways away from the joint. Perhaps this is a really obvious thing but it didn't occur to me at first..
The best way to get the real thing is order one from Edsyn direct at http://edsyn.com/ or wait for geekhackers to restock.
Element14/Farnell (I think they are Newark in the US) also stock a few models. At one point I picked up a SS750LS for $10 AUD, though I am not sure how seeing as the price is now double that
Still, if you don't want to wait for geekhackers, or are in any of the other countries Element14 have warehouses, it might be an option.
On an unrelated note, Hakko gear is ridiculously expensive here in Australia (Pretty sure I ranted in this thread 6 months ago about having to pay double for no good reason). I ended up getting one of
these Goot stations:
Fast heating, temperature controlled. Cost me about $90 shipped. Done everything from SMT to appliance repairs with it. Just thought it would be an option for those whom Hakko shaft on pricing (still looking at $220+ for Hakko here in Australia).