Several months ago I bought a roomba from iRobot. For those living under a rock, it's a robotic vacuum that wanders my apartment in search of dust, dirt, and cat hair, and sucks it up into its little bin.

A cursory search of this blog tells me I have not posted about this before, so I will say that I have been very happy with my roomba pet edition. It's kept my apartment's carpets in pretty good shape, and it helps get litter off the bathroom floor when my cat decides it no longer belongs in the box.

Unfortunately, this toy has attained the rank of a good thing that comes to an end. After about eight months, my roomba will no longer take a charge. It happened suddenly; my faithful robot trundled around the apartment one day and returned to its dock, never to recharge again. At first I thought it needed cleaning. I cleaned it. Then I thought it must just not be on the dock properly. Perhaps the terminals were messed up. But they were not. It seems the battery simply will not take a charge.

The batteries in the roomba have consistently been problematic. I know people whose roombas would take a charge but refuse to hold it, crapping out after just a few minutes. That's the biggest complaint I've heard.

I think my next vacuum will be a bagless upright. I wonder where I'll store it.

We have an older Roomba with the same battery problem.

There are ways you can entirely discharge and recharge it, which worked in the past for us, but sadly no more.

I'm planning on just buying a new battery, about $50

We don't use the Roomba in place of an upright, but alongside it - the upright definitely has many things that make it more attractive than the Roomba, but the Roomba works by itself, my upright doesn't :)