I must admit to being a gadget and electronics freak. I just love what gadgets and electronics can do for people, and when they actually work as advertised (not all do), it is really a great find.

I recently had the opportunity to try out my brother's Roomba iRobot. I had been looking at this for awhile, but based on my typical electronic gadget purchases, this was a bit on the pricey side, like over $225 depending on the model and accessories you get with it. The thing that fascinated me about this alleged electronic marvel was that it took a rather mundane task like sweeping and cleaning floors and made it almost a totally automated task. So I was more than happy to give it a try when my brother offered when he and his wife were going on a two week vacation.

The first thing that I noticed is that the Roomba is amazingly intuitive. When you put its "home base" somewhere, it knows and remembers where that location is. I did not have to program the Roomba to tell it exactly where the home base was, it just knew.

Now the real test – can it really clean and sweep the floor, especially in a household that has a dog that sheds liberally? Although the Roomba can operate in "automated" mode and perform its tasks when you are not home so as to not get in the way, I wanted to watch it and see if it was really doing a good job. This was also interesting.

As it started its task for the kitchen & dining room, it seemed to go in random patterns. This is not the way we sweep where we typically start at the edges and sweep everything inwards, or when we manually vacuum where we do sections at a time, but this random pattern eventually does do an amazingly good job of covering all of the area of the room. I wonder if that is the reason that it probably takes a bit longer, about 30 minutes on average, to sweep a room about 10' x 14' size. It struck me as being very similar to an automatic pool cleaner that goes across the bottom of the pool in seemingly random patterns, but eventually every part of the pool bottom is covered. Does it take longer to accomplish the task this way? Maybe – compared to what though? Compared to doing it manually, absolutely, but the purpose of the Roomba is so that you are not allocating your time to do such a mundane task, and assuming your time is more valuable than that, although it is a task that still needs to be done, regardless of how mundane.

I was amazed at how well the sensors work in the Roomba so it can detect and not run into furniture. If it does happen to clip something, the outside casing is made such that it will not leave a scratch or dent in the furniture. It also has a sensor that supposedly detects a stairway edge so it will not fall off, but since I don't have stairways I was not able to verify that advertised

One thing I did notice is that I have a table that has rather high legs but apparently the Roomba sensors did not detect an obstacle and it got stuck under the table. When it discovered it was stuck (and I'm still not sure how that determination is made), it starts making a sound like a wounded kitten to let you know. It's funny and almost pathetic but at least it realized that it needed help.

All in all, I think I'm going to get one. I value my time and for something that performs mundane tasks like keeping the floor clean and pretty free of dog hair, it is well worth the investment in technology.