I waited around for a good deal to appear on woot or another shopping site. When I gave up hope one finally popped up as the Amazon gold box deal of the day. It was more than $200 off its original price and ended up coming out to be $179.99, with free shipping. Not too bad, and at that price I figured it was well worth a gamble and it would allow me to write a detailed review.

Background:
For those of you that do know, Roomba is a robotic vacuum from the company irobot. Yes it sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but the technology seems far less advanced then that. iRobot has been making these cleaning bots for years. They are not limited to just the Roomba Vacuums, they also make the Scoomba floor cleaner/robo mop (lol), a robot gutter cleaning device, and a few different pool cleaners, and that is just at the consumer level. For industry I think they make some far more advanced robots that do some very specific tasks. Anyhow, for this review we will only be talking about one product, the iRobot, Roomba 550 with 2 lighthouse towers and docking/charging station.

First Impression:
Since I got my Roomba from Amazon, and it was the goldbox special, there was a short 2 or 3 week wait for the unit. As every day went by I got more and more excited and wondered how robotically clean my little 1000 square foot condo would be. I would think of the good time my robot and I would share and how spotless my floors would become. I figured the Roomba would replace my need to get a dog as an assistant to clean up spills and drops in the kitchen.

When the Roomba finally arrived, it was well packaged from amazon. The box was somewhat awkward when it opened and I ended up with an upside down robot and a few C batteries scattered on my floor. Whoops. I flipped through the instructions, find a nice little home for the Roomba and plugged the Roomba 550 in to charge.

A few hours later the color of the light on the top indicated the roomba was ready to go, and hit the CLEAN button and the magic happened.

The little robot took off down the hallway where I hope he would not enter. He then made a turn and came right on back. He zagged and zigged, zigged and zagged all around my kitchen and living room/office area. I was pretty impressed. He seemed to go over everything a few times, and seemed to do a pretty good job. Around my desk he attempted to grab a cord or two, but got out of any sticky situation.

I stood around with my arms crossed, like a proud father watching his son win the big game. I was blown away. The Roomba really worked. It even made its way back to the charging cradle. I emptied the little guy out and was amazed by how much dust and other crap he picked up. The future was now, and the robot revolution has begun.

My Second Impression:
I started to use the scheduling options on the Roomba 550 and would set my robot to clean the house every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3pm, so that when I got home from the office I could eat off my floor (a popular habit of mine). This would require me to empty and clean the little bugger quite often.

It would seem like it was almost necessary to clean the Roomba’s brushes, dustbin, and anything else you could after he ran. This would take maybe 5 minutes, still better than going around cleaning everything manually.

Well one day I came home from work, I was hoping to see my kitchen spotless, as it has been, but today it did not look like anyone cleaned it. Thought it was a little bit odd. I looked at the Roombas charging / docking station and he was no where to be found. I called his name. No reply.

I looked high, and low for the guy but he was no where to be found. I started to get a little worried. I then looked in my family room and saw some tire tracks in my carpeting. ODD, where could he be? I followed the tracks and eventually found Roomba under my couch. He was hiding out like a scared child, hiding from the thunder. Somehow he bypassed the virtual walls and got to where he does not belong.

That was the first issue I noticed. He sometime just goes wherever he wants. The other problem I have been having is if I use the roomba on carpeting it takes a lot more maintenance and cleaning than you would think a high tech “robotic maid” would require.

After months of normal use:
I played around with various uses of the roomba for months, and even stopped using it for a bit. Now I set up my apartment so that the roomba only cleans one of the rooms, the great room. It is a pretty open area, with very few cords, or distractions, and now carpeting to clog up the brushes. It also contains my kitchen and an eating island with stools. So it gets messy pretty often and the roomba is scheduled to clean it 3 times a week.

Ever since I went to this single room option I have been very happy with my purchase. I can go well over a week now without having to empty the roomba out or take apart the brushes. It seems like it was carpeting and rugs that were causing the majority of my issues. That said I still have some hilarious moments when I see what sort of trouble my roomba creates.

About a week ago I entered my living room to a xbox 360 controller by the door, a rug bunched up in the middle, and the roomba nowhere in site. Somehow it got caught up in a rug, pulled my xbox controller from the xbox and carried it across the room, and then got itself into a big mess of cords in the corner, where he gave up hope and called it quits.

So from my months of owning one of these robotic vacuums, is that 1, you need to keep your cords tidy. 2, the roomba hates lightweight rugs (like the cheapo ones from ikea), 3, the roomba can clean carpeting, but you will need to clean the brushes all the time if you use it for cleaning carpeting, and it leaves tons of weird “tread marks/patterns” in the carpet.

Customer Service:
The only real issues I have had are due to the cords. The one day it seemed like the side brush quit spinning, I could not figure out how to get it to work. I called support and within minutes they had the problem solved. I needed to unscrew 1 screw then clean hair off the side brush. Since that day I have made taking apart the side brush as regular maintenance.

I was impressed with the customer service, and after looking at some of the help online, it seems like the roomba is pretty well made. It is quite modular, so it is unlikely that you whole unit will ever just go bad. You may loose function in one are, but it should be painless to fix if one of the motors quits working or something like that. It seems well thought out in regards to replacement parts.

While the roomba may not really be as smart as I had hoped I find it helpful. I am convinced it just runs for 25 minutes doing whatever it wants rather than somehow mapping the room. The one thing I wish it had was a sensor that could tell when there is an object above it, so it never stops in the middle of a cycle under a bed or couch. I think it would pretty easy to add that feature.

The Actual Performance:
I always am surprised with how much dust and such the roomba manages to pick up. It seems to gather really fine dust that brooms and other vaccums may miss. On hardwood floors the roomba is great, whenever I empty the bin on my roomba there is probably a half cup of really fine dust that gets thrown out.

Summary:
All in all, I am happy with my purchase. It may not be perfect for everyone, and in some instances it may be more of a hassle than a helper if you have to constantly clean the brushes due to long hair or carpet fibers. If you have hardwood floors, are fairly tidy, and keep things like cords off your floors the roomba may be a helpful time saver that can help you cut down on your chores. If you fit those three criteria I think it can be a great purchase. If you have lots of cords or mostly have carpeting, I do not recommend the roomba for your use, but rather a non robotic dyson vacuum.

PS: I started to write this like a year ago only a month or so after owning the roomba, and now it has been about a year and I finished it up.

If you know me, you will know that I love a good checklist, and last year I decided to make a checklist for 2009 rather than some simple New Years Resolution like "be healthy" or "be nicer". My brain does not work like that. Instead I had to make numerous tasks and put a quantity that I needed to do. The goal of this was to improve my life.

I did not get everything completed but I did finish quite a few. Some of the more important ones last year were to start dating again, so my goal was to go on 24 dates. I actually did do this and met a nice lady in the process. There were some about travel, reading, camping, working out things like that. Overall I would say it was a success, but I did fail to meet many of the goals, just because I started really late in the year (I think I made the list in March) so time was already crunched, and it is hard to jump into some of the items without proper planning.

Here were my tasks for 2009:

• Read 12 Books
• Work out 120 Times
• Go On 24 Dates
• Try 12 New Restaurants
• Try 12 New Bars
• See 4 Other Countries
• Go Swimming 3 Times
• Go Camping 1 Time
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint 4 Paintings
• Make 24 Drawings
• Take 24 Great Photos

And here is my actual list and what was completed:

Pretty good, right? Well at least enough for me to get one together this year, and start checking things off. Here is what I need to do / Plan on doing in 2010:

• Work out 104 Times
• 36 Blog Posts
• Frame / Hang all art work
• Hang out with friends 16 times
• Do 12 Cheap Things In Chicago
• Take 4 Classes
• See 4 Other States
• Go Swimming 1 Time
• Go Camping 3 Times
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint/Wallpaper 2 Rooms
• 6 Art things
• Volunteer 4 Times
• Read 4 Books

Based on my experience from 2009 the major changes were to get rid of the art projects, reduce the workouts from 10 a month to 2 a week, replaced international travel with camping, more socializing, less reading (since I never find time to read), and added the volunteering and classes.

Even though I have been sick a week this month I did get the following done: 7 Work outs, 3 rooms have been painted (kitchen, bathroom and my office wall). I am looking forward to it warming up and hanging out with friends again. I hate doing anything in the winter. Looking forward to biking again and longer days.

What are your goals for 2010?

Maybe a year and a half ago I started to drink soda water with a lime. I would get it whenever I would go to a bar and then started to crave it at home. My options for that were to buy 1 or 2 liter bottles at the local grocery store. If I needed it in a bind I would get a liter at the 7-11 for about $1.79! This started to get expensive so I researched what my options were to make my own seltzer water online. It seemed like there were really only 4 options:

1. Get an old fashioned Soda Siphon – You know like the 3 Stooges would use to spray each other in the face. While these are stylish they are not all that practical. First off they contain a few parts which need to be cleaned out, and second they need disposable CO2 cartridges like you would need in a paintball gun or mini bike inflator. You can get a Soda Siphon for about  $40 online, and the Co2 cartridges run about 50 cents each in bulk. Each liter requires one cartridge, so about 50 cents per liter. I liked this option but did not like all the waste it would generate.
2. Build my own carbonation system using a bulk CO2 tank. This is the cheapest solution in the long run, but it requires a bunch of extra equipment and is a but bulky and industrial. You need a larger CO2 tank, that you can get a beer brewing store. You also need regulators, some hose, and you need to hack some soda bottles. The initial cost for this is probably around $150-200, but you can do it with a 5-50lb co2 tank which means YEARS of bubble water, for pennies per liter. I am not an expert at this, but here are some nice tutorials (found here). In the end it seemed like a lot of work and equipment for my already cramped house.
3. Get a commercial soda system. This is what they would use at a restaurant or bar. This would probably be the coolest system, but also the most labor intensive and expensive. It could easily run into the thousands of dollars, and take some serious hacking of my kitchen to get it installed. The plus side I would have a bad ass soda gun and an unlimited supply of bubble water. It would also require all the equipment in the homebuilt method, plus a compressor, and more. So I did the following:
4. Get a SodaStream Soda Maker. The units range from non offensive to pretty cool looking. The starting price is about $100 and should have enough CO2 to carbonate around 100 liters of water. So it is about $1 a liter to start, but when you get refills it is about 25 cents per liter. To me this seemed like a great compromise; little to no waste, a decent price, and no crazy equipment. Here is my review.

I love my SodaStream, there I said it. This is a product that works like it is supposed to. It is a relatively simple product, with a really specific purpose, but it does a great job. The first unit I ordered was the "Fountain Jet Soda Value Kit". I would not recommend getting this kit if you only want to make seltzer / soda water at home. It comes with a bunch of things that you do not need. Anyhow this kit cost me I think $130. It now is at $149, but there are coupons available.

It took maybe a week for the kit to arrive and here are my unboxing photos:

You can see that it came with 2 gas tanks, the soda maker and a bunch of soda mixes. Now when I mentioned I would not recommend the “Soda Value Kit” it is based on all those soda mixes. I am not really a fan of them. I like just plain old soda water myself, so if you are drinking just soda water, get yourself one of the Seltzer kits instead of the soda kit.

Now you might be wondering how the SodaStream actually works. It is pretty easy, and there are not really any moving parts. You have one large tank of CO2, a sturdy plastic bottle, and a button to dispense the gas into the bottle and a little tube that goes into the water in the bottle.

You pretty much fill the bottles with water, refrigerate them, then take the cap off, put it on the machine, and hit the button. Here is a video I made myself, filming it with one hand while making soda with the other. It is really that simple!

Like I said, I love having a Soda Stream at home, and have given them as gifts.To date I have actually purchased 3 Soda Steam machines. I have given one to my sister as a gift, my old one to my girlfriend for her office, and a beautiful orange one for myself.

I think I have now ordered 10 tanks of gas which last me about a month each, less in the summer since I drink more than one liter of soda water a day. My next project will be testing various ways of refilling the tanks myself to further reduce the costs. It will be interesting, and costly, but it should pay for itself in the long run, as well as lower the cost of making soda water to all the people I know who have gotten themselves a SodaStream.

Now that you see how it works, and why you should get one, all you need to do is order one. You can get a SodaStream directly from SodaStreamUSA.com, but be sure to try out a few of these coupon codes if you are planning to buy a machine or gas:

SodaStreamUsa.com Coupon Codes:

BESTFRIENDS – This will Save you $10 Off  a new machine
SAVEBIG – This will save you 10%
MAKESODA – This will save you  $10 on a new machine
FREEMIX – This will allow you to get a free soda mix, you should be able to stack this with another coupon code, just enter this one in first and make sure you have a soda mix in your cart
Code MIKE or PATRICIA – should give you free shipping.

Do you own a SodaStream? What do you think of it?