131–140 of 839 posts
It'll still be going in another 10 years, but the AliExpress sourced parts are never of the same quality.
I was rather happy with my old, dumb Roomba. It just bounced around until things were clean. No cloud required. No mapping. No AI marketing foo. Seems like all the newer alternatives want internet access and send maps of your premises to some cloud somewhere. Seems completely unnecessary to me.
Roomba couldn’t remember map, so when you wanted to clean part of the apartment you had to build barriers or just walk with it. It also got lost way too many times. As for the Chinese products - look at Valetudo. If you write about cloud and privacy considerations then you are already aware enough to just flash it and you have local, cloud-free, GREAT product.
They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US. Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.
How many general public appliance makers out there have a competitive production line outside of China ? As I understand the only countries where one could barely pull that off would be Korea or Japan, and the local makers are mostly giving up as they lose too much on cost.
Miele (at a more premium price point) production is even more concentrated in Germany. https://m.miele.com/en/com/production-sites-2157.htm
(Edit: No replies after 8 hours, but of course they then came in quickly after Europe woke up..)
This is a shame. Unsure about later models, but my Roomba 620 is eminently repairable. Just last weekend I replaced the wheels with some original (from iRobot). It'll still be going in another 10 years, but the AliExpress sourced parts are never of the same quality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anybody who played Doom, or Quake, or Counterstrike knows: if you are not moving, you are dead. And if you try to show a counterexample, and say: "Look, I'm not moving, and I'm alive all right", it's an illusion, because the rockets, grenades, nails, and plasma charges that will slay you are already in flight, you are just failing to see them.
Camping is a viable strategy in many Quake levels, and it is problematic to the point that many servers will kill you if you stay in one place for too long.
I've had my Miele vacuum cleaner for 15 years now, and I bought it second hand. I can still buy bags and filters for it, and when the floor roller piece broke (something heavy fell on it) I was able to buy a replacement one for cheap. I see no reason why it can't go another 10 years.
It feels like a very low probability that a robo-cleaner I buy now will come from a company that (in 10+ years) will a) exist and b) support 10+ year old vacuum cleaners.
I had a Roomba about 10 years ago. It was OK but required a lot of “handholding” to not run over cords, kids toys, etc. It just was not really worth it to use it in an environment where you can’t keep everything nailed down and off the floor at all times. Relocated it to a basement level where we had much more empty but sill finished space. The cat angrily pooped just outside her litter box and the Roomba ran right o…
i watched via camera 12 years ago roomba spreading my dogs diarrhea all over living room (thanks god to tile floors). I connected to camera first time in a months just few seconds before roomba took first swipe over the poop. Still remember feelings of paralysis, despair and lack of control. Despite this i still used roomba everywhere I lived. latest roomba model actually has "poop detection".
The cloud-based software for everything else has degraded in quality, tjough. I'll probably upgrade to a lidar-equipped competitor model if this continues to get worse after this bancruptcy.
Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down? I've had my Miele vacuum cleaner for 15 years now, and I bought it second hand. I can still buy bags and filters for it, and when the floor roller piece broke (something heavy fell on it) I was able to buy a replacement one for cheap. I see no reason why it can't go another 10 years. It feels like a very low probability…
Not a particularly useful comment but curious of others also have trouble reading that domain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anybody who played Doom, or Quake, or Counterstrike knows: if you are not moving, you are dead. And if you try to show a counterexample, and say: "Look, I'm not moving, and I'm alive all right", it's an illusion, because the rockets, grenades, nails, and plasma charges that will slay you are already in flight, you are just failing to see them.
Camping is a viable strategy in many Quake levels, and it is problematic to the point that many servers will kill you if you stay in one place for too long.