Geek Fad Redux: Still Good Or SuckedInPractice?

[traveller_blues]

All right, this is a question set to all of you geek friends of mine who may have at one point bought yourself a Roomba

Comments

[tugrik]

BTW = Stairs + Roomba = works quite perfectly. :) that's one thing they do well: avoid falling down stairs!

We're pretty happy with ours. My sister, even moreso with hers.

[sassinak]

What he said! Tor bought us one of the early ones and we used it regularly until we wore it out. We replaced it with a new one last year (you can ask Ross what generation it is, I don't recall) that we use daily. It is a vast improvement in many ways over the old one - cleans better, picks up lots more hair, and gets stuck much less often. Granted - it will never be as good as our Dyson. But we can run the Roomba every day without upsetting the cats or the kid.

*grins* Even long unicorn mane hair?

[traveller_blues]

I -killed- the vacuum cleaner before the Dyson by having my ponytail shedding wrapped around the beater brush bad enough that it warped the pins out.

Well, this was for a story (characters commenting on the effectiveness of Roombas), but I may earmark part of my tax refund for one of them next year.

-Trav

Roomba

[jon_ra]

Tor got us a Discovery 4600 and we currently have a 560. We have it scheduled to run every day (and it is disturbing how much it picks up every single day)

It also has geek factor since it has a serial port and several ways to write your own custom code (You can even get a bluetooth adapter now). I've been pondering playing with it through Microsoft Robotics Studio. Not sure if I can send the Roomba for groceries, but maybe a robot arm to pick up small toys, socks, and other items that sometimes give it issues...or maybe to fetch snacks.

[kistaro]

*whirr* *thump* *whirr* *thump* *whirrr* *thump*

Actually, it works quite well, and I use it- well, not as regularly as I should, but regularly enough; it's my only vaccuum cleaner. I bought mine from woot.com, since it cost exactly the same amount as a real vaccuum cleaner from a regular store would've, and if I can be lazy, so much the better.