Beware of the battery...
Exactly a year after I bought it, the battery died. Now it won't hold a charge at all.
You would think that the battery would have degraded slowly? Apparently not. It's as
if iRobot had a timer inside, which killed the battery after exactly 1 year.
I hate it when manufacturers do that. Let the batteries run their due course.
What a waste of resources!

my new best fiend
I knew very little concerning the iRobot Roomba before I purchased it, and to tell the truth I was a bit skeptical.
After using it for the first time I was amazed at the amount of dirt it was able to pick up -- and this was after I had just cleaned the room with my ordinary vacuum cleaner. This item is definitely worth the money.

good but loud
you will know when this is running. i suggest you turn it on and leave the room, or better, leave the house and come back. you're not watching tv, reading, or listening to the yankee game when roomba's doing its thing.
other than that, seems to work fine and do a good job. picks up alot.

Best Advice: Just Try It
I was as big a skeptic of the Roomba as probably anyone out there. My uninformed perception was that it was nothing but an expensive novelty and couldn't possibly clean very well. It wasn't until my boss (who's as pragmatic an individual as I've ever met) raved about his Roomba that I decided to give it a shot.

I've owned mine for about 2 months now, and I can't imagine being without it. There's a reason these things have such high ratings on Amazon- they actually work. It won't replace your regular vacuum, but it'll relegate it to the corner of your closet for a month at a time.

The Roomba isn't perfect though and brings some minor annoyances with it. As other reviewers have pointed out, bi-weekly or monthly maintenance is required to keep the Roomba functioning properly. Also, the manufacturer's recommendation is that the filter in the Roomba be replaced every month or two, and although the process is trivial, the filters are approximately 4 to 5 bucks a pop.

I've also found, as common sense would suggest, that the Roomba performs best when confined to smaller areas. I live in a small apartment, and the first time I used the Roomba I let it loose in the living room, and it haphazardly traveled from room to room until its battery died, never really doing what I felt was an acceptable job in any one room.

I've since altered my routine to confine the Roomba to a particular section of the apartment, and it does an impeccable job. I just carry it to whichever section of the apartment I want it to vacuum and turn it on before I leave for work. In this way, I cover the entire apartment in 3 day cycles. Note that there are other (more "capital-intensive" and elegant) strategies that people adopt for efficient Roomba cleaning- this is just mine.

My advice to any skeptics out there is to just try the Roomba for yourself. If you're not convinced that it's the next best thing since sliced bread, then you'll definitely be in the overwhelming minority. Also, if you have pets of any kind, the previous statement applies double to you.

What a SMART product!
I live in an 900 Square foot apartment that has mostly hardwood floors, with a small area rug in each room. (with no fringe on the rugs)

There are basically 3 rooms that we use this for, the living room, the bedroom, small home office 10 x 10, and a long hallway.

Simply, this thing works, and works well.
Each time I set it down, in it's starting point, in the room, it immediately remembers the pattern of the room from it's previous cleaning.

It took me a while to sell my wife on this product, but after she saw how efficiently it cleaned under the bed, without her needing to get under there with swiffer's, she was sold!

The only real downside of roomba, seems to be the little extra time it takes to clean the unit. They provide a small tool for cutting hair from the rollers, and you can disassemble the rollers, but it gets a little messy. For me it's worth it, for a product that does such a thorough job. It really is very clever and ultimately a time saver in the end.