My Roomba arrived today after a one week journey from New Jersey to my home in Walla Walla, Washington (the company I bought it from is based in Bellevue, Washington, so I had to pay in-state sales tax, but the unit shipped from the other side of the country... uhhh). As I type this, it is criss-crossing the floor behind me. I'm blogging while a robot is taking care of a necessary household chore. This is exactly why I bought the thing in the first place: the $150 I spent will leverage an incredible amount of productive time for me.
This thing really delivers, too. It picked up everything it ran across, and its "dirt detect" feature prompted it to circle over areas where it found heavier deposits of stuff - the carpet right outside of the bathroom in which my cats have their litter box is one of its favorite places to stop and pay extra attention to. This thing is picking up cat hair like there's no tomorrow, but more so than that, it was PACKED with carpet fuzz after its first run. The carpets are brand new... I thought the cats could shed, but they've got nothing compared to my carpets.
The cats seem to be mostly OK with the Roomba, too, which is another thing I really wanted out of the device. They don't want it coming near them, but they don't flee the room when it gets going. In fact, they tend to follow it from room to room and keep an eye on it. This is a marked improvement over their terror induced destruction of my home whenever I brought out my vacuum cleaner.
On the Roomba's first fully charged run, it covered almost my entire apartment before running out of power after just under one hour of operation. Because of its semi-random movements, it barely entered my computer room, but that's no big deal since on a subsequent run I can start it off in whatever room it missed the last time. I'm enjoying this thing. All I do is press a button and walk away, I don't even interact with it, but it's so much fun!
I'm declaring this money well spent.
2 comments:
It does sound like it does a lot more than what one would expect for $150. Doesn't a good vacuum cleaner cost about as much? Now, if only they can come up with something to clean the toilet and tub! Cooking would be great, too. It's not like you can even expect such things from marriage! ;)
oops... Forgot to put a title on this one. Fixed. :)
Yeah, this thing is performing a lot better than I had expected. I figured I'd get something that could pick up dust and small stuff. It's pulling all of the crap out of my carpets though. Big bonus!
iRobot apparently has a floor mopping robot, so I may go for that one next. What I really want it a laundrybot. :)
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