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Does anyone have a iRobot Roomba?

jefrazie

jefrazie

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I've been looking at these things for a while now and think they are absolutely the coolest thing I have ever seen (yes, I plan to tinker with the software :D). I was going to run up to BB&B to go pick one up today. Does anyone else have one that could tell me how well they work and such?
 
Id be curious about this too. I keep seeing these things and wonder how well they work. And will my dogs try to kill it while were away at work. At the least maybe it cleans AND keeps the dogs up. WINNING.
 
I had the roomba and scooba (sp). Mopping function stunk and got rid of it quickly. Roomba worked okay in big open rooms. Had to change the cleaning box a couple of times though. Battery worked pretty good, it was supposed to dock itself for charging when it was winding down, but it never really did that. We went back to the Dyson vacuum and got rid of them after about 3 months. In the right home configuration it might work pretty well.
 
My best friend has one and he loves it
 
My sister loves her Roomba but they have big rooms and hardwood floors.
 
They work great on floors, but they do fill up pretty quick. Pretty useless on any carpet though.
 
yorkem said:
They work great on floors, but they do fill up pretty quick. Pretty useless on any carpet though.
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I'm in a ~1000 sq foot apartment with a big living room/dining room that is all carpet. Bedroom is also carpet. The floor plan is pretty open and I don't have too much junk/furniture all over other than basics (couch, tv stand, guitars, tables). Kitchen/Bathroom/laundry room are all tile. Do you think it should work with this layout?

I don't have a dog or anything so this is just to keep it fairly clean.
 
Do those little barrier things actually work so it doesnt fall down the stairs or get itself stuck?
 
yorkem said:
They work great on floors, but they do fill up pretty quick. Pretty useless on any carpet though.
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Yes, I forgot that part, they do a terrible job on carpet.

OEM Kevin said:
Do those little barrier things actually work so it doesnt fall down the stairs or get itself stuck?
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They do. I find that the time it takes for them to do a small room, and you setting up the barriers and everything, you could vacuum the house about 10 times over.
 
JB said:
Yes, I forgot that part, they do a terrible job on carpet.



They do. I find that the time it takes for them to do a small room, and you setting up the barriers and everything, you could vacuum the house about 10 times over.
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Well that about kills it for me. Really I just want to plug it in and forget about it. Come home to less dog hair. Sounds like its not worth it.
 
We used to have one, if you have pets I would not recommend it. We ordered our first and it worked great for about a month, it got really full fast and occasionally like JB said would not dock itself. Eventually the battery just wouldn't charge and it just wouldn't move anymore. Roomba was great and sent us another one pretty quickly but after about the same time the same thing happened and it just would not move. So we gave up on them.
 
Dent said:
We used to have one, if you have pets I would not recommend it. We ordered our first and it worked great for about a month, it got really full fast and occasionally like JB said would not dock itself. Eventually the battery just wouldn't charge and it just wouldn't move anymore. Roomba was great and sent us another one pretty quickly but after about the same time the same thing happened and it just would not move. So we gave up on them.
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+1000 The Roomba is awesome but it wont pick up dog/cat hair very well. And +1 also for the small storage area.

As for the mechanics, the older roomba's didn't use lasers or anything, there was just a few pressure switches around the body to tell it when it ran into something. I can't say anthing about the newer models though. Good Luck Jefrazie, I hope you build a robotic vacumn/armored security guard/golf ball putting return machine!

edit: My mom's got this new machine, its not a roomba company machine, but its essentially the same thing but instead of a vacumn, it pushs a soft wet cloth (like a swiffer sheet) around the hard wood floors. That machine worked pretty well.
 
As everyone mentioned they suck or carpet and don't do pet hair at all.

They are however highly entertaining once you alter the software a bit. At one point we had three in the office and use to have them motor around doing flying V's for the fun of it.
 
We have one and ours actually work pretty good even on dog hair.
Of course a lot of that could depend on what type floors it is being used on. We have laminate flooring with a few large area rugs and have no complaints with the Roomba. As a matter of fact, it does a better job than the last two vacuum cleaners that we had.
 
OEM Kevin said:
Id be curious about this too. I keep seeing these things and wonder how well they work. And will my dogs try to kill it while were away at work. At the least maybe it cleans AND keeps the dogs up. WINNING.
Click to expand...

I've heard horror stories about dogs having an "accident" and the Roomba spreading it around the entire room/house...
 
JNRadio said:
I've heard horror stories about dogs having an "accident" and the Roomba spreading it around the entire room/house...
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I've also seen vids of dogs tearing roombas apart too.
 
OK enough bashing on the Roomba. We're forgetting the entertainment value of the machine. Who cares that it can't actually vacumn?
:D

[YOUTUBE]vf9wHkkNGUU[/YOUTUBE]
 
Snap Hook said:
OK enough bashing on the Roomba. We're forgetting the entertainment value of the machine. Who cares that it can't actually vacumn?
:D

[YOUTUBE]vf9wHkkNGUU[/YOUTUBE]
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Lol is it bad that that's half the reason I want the thing?
 
I have a friend who prides himself on his laziness. He has one and it works ok, its more or less amusing if anything at all.
 
I think this is more for entertainment than anything. How would it do stairs? You'd still have to take out the manual vacuum for those!

I've seen the same thing advertised to cut your lawn.
 
It looks really cool, but I don't feel like it'd work well with tons of furniture or small rooms. If I had the cash I'd buy one though :D
 
Arkie_3_fan said:
We have one and ours actually work pretty good even on dog hair.
Of course a lot of that could depend on what type floors it is being used on. We have laminate flooring with a few large area rugs and have no complaints with the Roomba. As a matter of fact, it does a better job than the last two vacuum cleaners that we had.
Click to expand...

We have one that has an extra large bin to collect pet hair, it does work pretty good. We use it on the wood floors in the breakfast room, kitchen, den and hall. It is rare that we have to use the regular vacuum on those floors. As others have said it pretty much does a poor job on carpet. I can tell you this, if you order one you only get a 1 year warranty from irobot. If you order from Hammacher Schlemmer, they give a guarantee on everything they sell. Ours fried a circuit board after 2 years and they refunded my credit card for the full amount, I then ordered a new one from them. They did not question the one year past the irobot warranty.

http://www.hammacher.com/Product/78434?promo=search
http://www.hammacher.com/Editorial/LifetimeGuarantee?promo=bottom_nav

EDIT - Our dog was afraid of the roomba at first, but he pretty well ignores it now.
 
I have the Roomba 560

We love it. Most people say they dont do well on carpet. however this is not meant to take away from your home stand up vaccum, this is meant to get the top stuff and you can do a deep clean later with a stand up. We use a Dyson and we love that as well and that vacuum gets it all.
 
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