Really interested to find out what people say as its top of my wish list too ,hoping father Christmas has one for me :) yes I can dream .

I have the programable one. We have 2 cats and one dog and it picks up their hair along with whatever is on the floor. It will go over rugs too if they are even. I have a cheapy one from one of the home repair stores and it gets stuck on it because of the different textures. I empty it out after every run as it is full. It is loud so we program it when we are not home.

Jennifer e - you bring up an interesting point. I have a hand woven rug with different textures and even my beloved Dyson has trouble picking things up because of a raised Moroccan pattern in it. The rug hasn't been a great choice for a pet owner!

I've owned 1 for a year and a half. It's definitely a help with hardwood floors, tile and 2 dogs. However, after close to a year the battery doesn't stay charged. Here lately it just sits in the corner. Hope that helps.

Becky I have a Robomaid... I believe it is the cheaper cousin of the Roomba. I actually blogged about it once... this will give you my opinion! Being a house cleaning hater, I love it because anything that helps keep the dog hair to a minimum, I appreciate... BUT I'll admit I think the technology has a long way to go.

http://www.house-nerd.com/articles/the-adventures-of-robomaid

The first generation of these didn't last as long; it lasted a couple of years. The one we have now, the programable one, we have had for at least 2 years. We did have to purchase a new battery but it works great. I purchased mine from Bed Bath & Beyond and used my 20% discount as it is pretty expensive. I still love it and can tell immediately when I come home that the floor has been vaccumed.

Any new advice out there?

It was fun it initially, particularly for the cats and dogs, who stalked it, rode on it, etc. Did an ok job, and who wouldn't rather lie with her feet up on the sofa with a big glass of burgundy than shove a vacuum around every so often!? But it's now on stress leave with severe ptsd, poor wee thing. Too many battles lost fighting dust bunnies. Will probably buy an upgrade eventually.

Would LOVE to know about the same thing that cuts grass, if anyone has any experience! Another mind-numbingly pointless and time-consuming domestic chore.

I just recently purchased one from Costco. It is not a very fancy model but does have the ability to come on at a set time. I run it 3 times a week, and am going to likely go up to 4 times. I LOVE this thing. It certainly is not perfect but if you run it regularly you can really tell a difference. Each time it runs I dump all sorts of dust/dirt/pollen pods/grass clippings from it. And I love that it gets under my furniture. We have all hardwoods in our home on the level where it is. I do block off my dinning room (little traffic and a big wool rug that sheds and fills up the Roomba cup), so it does 3 decent size areas when it runs. I do have to pick up items on nights it is going to run. I pick up the dog bed, dog toys, throw rugs and even pick up a few kitchen chairs to give it a clearer path beneath my table. Also I clean it after each use. So there is some "work" to having it, you certainly can't expect it to do a good job when it can't reach areas due to items on the floor or cords in the way. But I like that it keeps me on task with putting up items.

I still dream of one of these. I always think of that episode of Gilmore Girls when Loralei and Rory are on the phone with each other, mouths agape, watching the Roombas that Emily sent them in action.

Can they hop from a thick area rug onto hardwood floors or do they get stuck?

It will not go from hardwood to a really shaggy rug, I have a pretty thick pad under one of my rugs and sometimes it will divert away from that, but it can get on it. So I guess I would say if you have a really thick shaggy rug with a pad probably not.

Becky, I have had the Roomba 860 for a little while now, and for us it hits the sweet spot between functionality and price. I wish more reviewers would describe their "use case," so here's mine: We have a mix of hardwoods, w2w carpet, tile in the bathrooms, and one large Oriental rug. We also have two cats, a pretty chaotic floorplan/furniture layout, and more than the average amount of stuff on the floor. So far, the 860 has handled it all with aplomb. It did try once to ingest one cat toy (out of four), but stopped and called out for help. It's been pretty amazing at handling power cords and random piles of books and stuff on the floor. The vacuum suction is surprisingly good--it has picked up pencils and large screws without complaint. I do put my tennies away now, as I'm not sure how well it would cope with shoelaces. The main thing is, OMG, how much impacted cat hair was in our house?! I figured it would be a day or two before we could let it run a full cycle without emptying the bin (what I think of as "maintenance vacuuming" mode), but no, it was more like two WEEKS of daily runs with multiple bin empties per run. That's on us, not the vac--when your house is in "maintenance mode," the bin is plenty big enough.

The 860 has the rubber beater bars, so you get to avoid the somewhat icky chore of removing matted fur from brushes (main reason I skipped the 650). It even gets the crumbs out from under the dining table and the kitchen toekicks, and the dust bunnies under our bed are now extinct. I have watched it climb from the tiled bathroom floor onto a very thick bath rug. Super-lightweight throw rugs might get bunched up rather than vacuumed over, but we don't have any of those (unless you count that one kitchen towel that always seems to fall on the floor... Roomba wads it up and then wanders away).

Watching the thing return to its dock is (to me) hilarious... as it approaches, it goes into s-l-o-w-w-w-m-o and waggles its nose from side to side, like a student driver in a bumper car trying to get into a parking spot. So cute! And although this model is advertised as single-room, in our two-story house it does a whole floor. Long story short (oops, too late!), I LOVE IT. I'm already plotting to get another for upstairs...

Old post....but I have one and I kind of have a love/hate relationship with it. I have to clean it out every day, and that's not just emptying the collection container. I have to clean the brush as 2 of us have long hair and it gets caught.

It's fun to watch for about ten seconds and works when I don't feel like it.

Note: They do NOT have suction, so it's more of a glorified sweeper.