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Roomba Celebrates 10 Years of Cleaning Up After You
SkinnyGuy writes "Roomba, the world’s first multi-million unit-selling home-helper robot, turns 10 today. iRobot has cooked up a self-congratulatory infographic filled with a collection of interesting and occasionally bizarre facts to mark the occasion. Did you know that dogs, cats and babies have ridden iRobot's iconic home cleaning robot since it was introduced exactly a decade ago?"
I bought a Roomba years ago to take care of some light-colored carpeting in the living room. I'm not buying another until they come with an under-the-couch dog poop sensor, standard.
Poodle skidmarks, man. Poodle skidmarks.
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The batteries are cheaper than a maid, and more thorough for those things it does.
A pain to keep running (hair wraps on spinning bits), but still less work than sweeping it yourself - transforms a long boring daily task into a much shorter one with intermittent tech skills required: Google search "WTF does two beeps mean on a Roomba", ah: get screwdriver, remove edge sweeper, cut away hair wrapped on hex shaft, replace, good to go for another 50 uses.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-roomba-blender-makes-smoothie-out-of-everythin,29539/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/roomba-violates-all-three-laws-of-roombotics,2184/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/roomba-maker-unveils-military-robot,15331/
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I grew up watching those little robots zipping around on the bridge of an Imperial star ship, so when I first powered up the thing I was a giddy. I felt like I was one step closer to the idealized future envisioned in my childhood.
Unfortunately, we're a lot closer to that Imperial future in a lot of ways we'd rather not be.
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Several years ago, we demoed a Dyson unit. They look cool and have good marketing, but we were pretty disappointed by its actual performance. It cost more and performed worse than the Hoover vacuum we wound up getting instead. Right now we have a Sebo, and it works great.
As for the Roomba's performance, isn't there an argument that you can have it go out and vacuum every day? If you have it set to do that, then your carpets shouldn't get dirty enough that the lower performance is an issue. It also means that your carpets stay clean the whole week, rather than having one day where they look real nice and six days getting progressively worse (or am I the only one who vacuums only once a week?).
(Dear lord, I can't believe I'm talking about vacuuming right now.)
If you can't convince them, convict them.