Review: iRobot Scooba 230

[Psi*]

HAHA not one of the typical reviews you guys look for. From the ieee Spectrum online

[Rob Williams]

Am I the only one who thinks these things are for extremely lazy people? Honestly, when it comes to a point where you need a small robot to clean your house because you can't be stuffed to, there's a problem.

These things remind me of timedemos for graphics cards reviews, which I also don't use. Too much setup and too much tweaking to get things just right...

[Optix]

I have more money than brains so rather than pay someone to do it properly, I'll buy a piece of junk to do a half ass job while I watch my insanely large plasma tv! Bring me another Perrier! *clap, clap*

[Kougar]

The vacuum Roomba's are actually quite useful... if you have a rather empty place free of clutter at least. A buddy of mine has an early model, it actually "dusts" the carpet along with picking up some dirt and hair... the net result being little maintenance and dropping the dust buildup in his home substantially. I heard somewhere that carpet generates much of the dust in a home, not sure if that was true but even a light routine cleaning seems to make a huge difference as far as his place goes. Not to mention it's always a laugh to hear about some new crazy situation the bot got into.. Last big one was the bot tipped over an ironing board, which scratched the still new dryer as it fell and knocked a series of other things over, while the bot itself got pinned in a corner...

I do agree with ya Rob, had the exact same opinion for this scooba version. Seems more gimmicky than actually useful, and if it requires constant maintenance too it really doesn't seem worth it. At least the old Roombas were autonomous and only needed to be emptied once a week or less.