Ultrasound, IX WAS wrong, bye bye Roomba 535

I have been talking to my buddy from work who also had tendinitis in both forearms a couple years ago.  He said he got over it by getting physical therapy where the region was massaged and treated with ultrasound.  Well I decided to skip going to and paying for PT by snagging my own ultrasound thingy.  It didn’t cost that much and I paid for it out of the funds from selling my Roomba 535.   I figure it was worth a shot and I have enough aches and pains that I can use it on various body parts.

Yes I sold my Roomba 535.  When these came out in August of 2007, I HAD to have one.  I actually returned a Roomba for Pets model in order to get this.

The 500 series of Roombas had all of these great features on paper like object detectors in the bumper so the unit slows down when approaching obstacles, anti-tangle technology so it wouldn’t get stuck on rugs and cords, modular construction that makes replacement of parts much easier and a vacuum that supposedly was much stronger than the 400 series.  There were a bunch of other improvements as well that made me feel like I just had to get it asap.

Well here is my real world impression after owning a 535 for a year and a half almost, it sucks.  Let me explain.  First of all if you have any ideas of having your 500 series robot coexist with older 400 series robots, forget it.  The 500 is effectively lobotomized when it comes anywhere near the infrared docking station or virtual walls the older models use.  It seems incredibly sensitive to the IR from these devices and as a result refuses to go anywhere close to them and will instead many times just circle in idiotic, worthless patterns.

The IR in the bumper of the unit sounds like a good idea but in reality in normal use it causes more problems than it’s worth.  The plastic in front of the sensors will get scratched over time with normal use.  These scratches can cause the infrared sensors to think that it is constantly approaching a wall which in turn makes the robot crawl at a snail’s pace.

  Anti-tangle technology would be aptly named shitty cleaning performance technology.  Yea the 535 can run over thick pile rugs and cords and not get stuck as often as a 400 series.  However the reason for this is partly because the brushes sit higher up in the robot and make less contact with the floor.  In my environment this has a very undesirable side effect, it does a poor job of picking up animal hair that is lodged in the carpet.  The difference in hair pick up between my 400 series robots and the 535 was staggering. The 400’s did a much better job.

The 535 also seems to be just plain stupid.  It manages to get itself stuck around the house routinely where as my 400’s will typically complete an entire run and successfully dock without issue.  My 535 has NEVER successfully run through a cleaning cycle and docked itself without my intervention.  When it encounters resistance, instead of intelligently turning the opposite direction and driving away, it will plow ahead, wedging itself under the furniture until it can no longer escape.  It also ignores what would seem to be obvious obstacles.  I can’t tell you how many times it has managed to drive right over the wooden base under my recliner and get itself wedged underneath.

One of the new features on this model was supposedly less of a problem with hair getting wrapped around the ends of the brushes which causes premature failure.  Instead, the 535 was absolutely horrible in this regard.  It has far more problems with hair wrapping around the brush ends than my 400 robots with pet brushes. The spinning side brush design on the 500’s is shit as well.  The arms on the brush break off routinely.

So as you can see, at least for me, the Roomba 535 was an utter failure.  I am glad to see it leave my household.  I’ll stick with the 400 series robots until they are no longer available.

So for the past 3 days I have missed calls from IX web hosting regarding my “comment”.  Finally today I got to speak to a “manager” named Kenny.  I briefly stated my issues.  Kenny told me that they actually discovered that they DID have a security problem with their PHPBB configuration on several servers and they were in the process of fixing it.  I then asked him why their tech support people were so clueless and instead just spit out canned responses that blamed the customer? He said that there were some “communication issues” that are being worked on as well. 

Kenny also enlightened me to the lay out of the organization.  Evidently a portion of their help desk operation is located in UKRAINE. (the servers are in Kentucky)  That explained why the majority of the time the people I deal with have names like Vladimir or Dimitry.  I asked Kenny if I could have his last name so I could use it as a reference if the problem reoccurs. “We don’t give out last names” he says. Um ok, so how am I supposed to identify you?  “Just say you talked to Kenny, they will know who that is”  I continued, asking if everyone at IX had fake names, like the people we deal with at the help desk.  He said their names are real.  I guess since they are in the Ukraine it is safe to give out the names since it is far easier to drive to Kentucky to wring a guys neck than flying to Eastern Europe. 

So our conversation ended, I thanked Kenny for following up with the call and that was that.  I was right, they were wrong.  I will be sure to keep this series of events catalogued for any future communications with their help desk.