Re: Roomba 570 problems

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"vincentb" <vincentb.38pynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vincentb.38pynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> I've got 2 robotic vacuums - a Roomba and a Karcher.  The Karcher is 8
> times the cost of the Roomba (because it has excactly what you asked
> for Dan - a self-emptying station, that sucks all the dust out of the
> vacuum and holds it in a dosposable bag concealed in the station).  But
> that is DEFINITELY not worth 8 times the cost of the Roomba.  I think my
> Karcher robotic vacuum is also obselete by now... it's about 4 years
> old.

G'day mate! It would be nice not to have to empty dust bins as often as I
do.  It would be even nicer not to have to untangle long hair, dog toy rope
fibers and other detritus from the unit's rotating brushes.  Those tasks are
*somewhat* offset by not having to drag out the vacuum hose or spend time
vacuuming.  Whenever I find myself futzing with the rollers and their easily
lost little bearings, I often wonder if I am not spending as much time
cleaning brushes as I would doing the vacuuming manually.

One of the reasons I've got five of them (4 DirtDogs and 1 4300 Red) is that
no one tray gets so filled up it starts spewing dust into the internals,
which seems to be the prelude for a number of sensor failures.  Five Roombas
clean up the house a lot faster and better than a single unit.  I've also
bought a case of dust spray and have developed a maintenance protocol that I
perform once a month.  It's a bitch, but it's cheaper than dealing with a
home cleaning service and a lot more immediate.  Having a number of Roombas
makes the maintenance chore a little less of a bitch because the economies
of scale kick in.  So far, unlike my cleaning lady, the Roombas have never
asked me for a loan or inflicted their family problems on me.  (-:  They
also show up when they're supposed to and they are not likely to plug a
vacuum into a UPS outlet or an X-10 lamp module.

> My Roomba works flawlessly also, but i too have seen friends' Roombas
> fail... as mentioned, one suffered from the 'spiral of death' and
> another's stairs sensors stopped working (didn't go down stairs as
> gracefully as a slinky).  You'd think iRobot would have tracked down
> these recurring problems and resolved them in the 570.

They've admitted to having a bad batch of sensors that caused the "Death
Spiral" problem and resolve those issues pretty quickly.  To their credit, I
can see just from the differences between the DirtDog and the Red 4300 that
they are continually improving their design.  I think a lot of the problems
will disappear - eventually.  I think that's one of the reasons they have
been so reasonable in exchanging failed units:  it gives their engineering
staff good insight into what works and what doesn't.  They must have been
improving their manufacturing efficiency as well, because both the Red and
the DirtDog can be had on sale at places like Fry's/Outpost for under $100
each.