I have a Miele canister vacuum. I love it.

My wife bought the Dyson garbage anyway because she can't ignore her instagram feed.

I don't understand how people deal with cords anymore, and basically I've stopped thinking about those for more than a decade now.

Cordless is nice until the batteries won't charge anymore. Or the charger stops working. Or you forgot to charge it and now want to use it. Or the charging connector gets worn and unreliable. Then you have an expensive battery replacement or other repair or (more likely) you just replace the whole device because it was made to be unrepairable, and now you have several pounds of plastic and e-waste to dispose of.

Dealing with plugging a cord into an outlet is no more burdensome than picking up the socks or shoes before the Roomba wakes up and tries to ingest them.

If the batteries don't work anymore, I buy a new vaccum. My Dyson was last updated in 2020, it is 2025 now, so I think it is working out? The charging dock works great for not forgetting to replace it.

I guess this is how people felt when they moved from wired phones to wireless phones?

> Dealing with plugging a cord into an outlet is no more burdensome than picking up the socks or shoes before the Roomba wakes up and tries to ingest them.

And dragging the cord around, and having to plug out and re-plug the cord in again because you want to do a different part of the room.

> And dragging the cord around, and having to plug out and re-plug the cord in again because you want to do a different part of the room.

As someone who used to sweep the floor of the family home as a chore, as a child, that makes me smile.

Ya, a broom is easier at that point: no cord. Or you just get a stick vacuum and call the problem done.

I'm also a Miele canister vacuum owner, and everywhere in my house where I vacuum is within range of a wall outlet. When I'm done, the cord retracts into the vacuum so I don't need to wind it or stow it myself. I guess, for me, that takes care of the issue to a great enough extent that I just never saw an advantage that justified the expense?

If you are ok with it, I think that's fine. Cordless to me is a huge productivity boost since I can just pick it up and vacuum whenever. I think most people see it as a huge win, but I haven't conducted a formal poll or anything.

Having a robot do everything is just another step in the convenience direction. It is great if you have expensive floors that you want to maintain on a daily or bi-daily basis.

> They could improve the design and get people to replace their machines with the improved ones, repeat and repeat.

> Or they could sell the broken design and people would just buy more as they broke. They don't care if Costco was eating the cost with their in-house warranty.

This strategy has limits, and I think iRobot hit those, and they didn't didn't lower themselves to switch to the second strategy of selling cheap unreliable garbage (at least not before 2019, which was the last time I bought a Roomba).

> The fundamental problem though is the same with all "household gadget" products. They look cool, and appear to solve a problem, but that is actually all a perception based on novelty. They actually don't work very well, they are not built very well, and they don't last very long. There's no point in improving them because the concept is fundamentally something people don't need in the first place.

I'd dispute this in this case: Roombas may not have solved the vacuuming problem for everyone, but they solved it for me (at least), and they were built pretty well (reliable, modular & reparable design, etc.).

> Just buy a good canister vacuum and you're set for a decade or more. It will cost more than the latest gadget from Shark or Dyson or iRobot but it won't frustrate you and it will just reliably do what it is supposed to do without uploading anything to an IP address.

1. I've got both, and the Roomba works a lot better than not vacuuming with the canister vacuum at all. It doesn't frustrate me, and it took far less time to Roomba-proof my home than vacuuming it every week for a year.

2. I agree with the IP address thing, but I think at only got added when they attempted to "get people to replace their machines with the improved ones." I have a couple of the older models that have no network connection (and had no plans to buy more due to the unnecessary network requirement).

a roomba, in a perfect world where it could avoid cat/dog toys scattered around the living room floor, makes pet ownership much more pleasant

> Just buy a good canister vacuum and you're set for a decade or more. It will cost more than the latest gadget from Shark or Dyson or iRobot but it won't frustrate you and it will just reliably do what it is supposed to do without uploading anything to an IP address.

Cords suck. So I bought a cordless vacuum, and was able to vacuum more. But I also needed a mop because vacuums don't do well enough on my laminate, stuff still gets stuck on. So I bought a cordless mop, so I could map more. This worked great for awhile but...

But it turns out if I did my vacuuming and mopping every night, I could keep my floor in better condition. I don't have time for that, but a robot from Eufy does and doesn't cost much compared to how much I would benefit from it.

Luddism on HN is a bit weird, but I get it, some people don't see the point of automating these tasks because their lives aren't complicated enough yet (e.g. they don't have kids, or have lots of free time and energy to spend on house work).