More on roomba

Yet again I am writing this as our iRobot roomba cleans our living room, kitchen and hall. So this gives me an opportunity to write a little bit more about it.

I would have to add that the vacuum does have a few hiccups and no doubt I will discover more over time. Anyway, here are a couple of minor issues that we have noticed.

Firstly, the unit is naturally heavy for its size which is a good and necessary thing. This does however give it the power to close doors and lock itself in a room. Indeed it did this in our kitchen 10 minutes a go. Naturally the “self induced” prison area gets an exceptional clean, but this is not the robot's objective.

Secondly, roomba is exceptional at finding and pulling out any loose cables of any size. This covers the leads for electrical equipment, phone lines and broadband cables. It does not damage them, but it is happy to play with them and drag them around for a while.

Thirdly, it really is incapable of recognising anything that is narrow and black. This means that desk legs, “spiked” hi fi speaker stands etc get a good knock. (It normally adjusts and reduces its speed as it approaches objects, but not in these cases).

These are small quibbles, but they do mean that you need to spend a couple of minutes preparing the area for roomba before you set it loose.

Even so, once in action it does a very good job and, although it has less power than a regular vacuum cleaner, it compensates by spending far more “meticulous” time in its cleaning chore.

So far we remain very impressed with it and sadly, we have done what everyone else does with an iRobot vacuum cleaner and given it a name.